Bolivia protesters seize gas plants

Protesters stormed natural gas plants in the Bolivian border town of Yacuiba and briefly took 58 police officers hostage after a demonstrator was killed, in the midst of a provincial dispute for control over a mammoth gas field. The protests in Yacuiba, which is located in Gran Chaco, were a response to roadblocks staged two weeks ago in O'Connor. On Apr. 18, some 10,000 people swarmed the installations of the private consortium Transredes, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. They set fire to two vehicles of the state-owned oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales de Bolivia, smashed computers and seized 2,000 liquefied gas cylinders. The day before, a bullet supposedly fired by one of the soldiers guarding the Transredes plants in Villamontes, in Gran Chaco, injured 37-year-old Derman Ruiz, who died on arrival at the hospital. He reportedly bled to death from a wound in his leg. The incident occurred when residents of Villamontes occupied the company's installations with the aim of shutting the valves of pipelines that run to the city of Tarija, the provincial capital, and across the border to Argentina. President Evo Morales' chief of staff Juan Ramón Quintana explained that the government order to guard the gas plants was focused on preserving public assets and guaranteeing gas supplies, and clarified that the troops did not have instructions to use lethal force. But the next day, 11 people were injured by firearms in confrontations with the security forces deployed to the offices of Transredes in Yacuiba. The protesters released the police officers later that day. Jaime Reyes, border police commander colonel, said the officers were freed after an agreement between the Bolivian government and authorities in Yacuiba. The border dispute was brought before the Tarija provincial government, but has been held up by legal questions for three years. Governor Mario Cossío of the opposition Nationalist Revolutionary Movement has been deprived by the Morales administration of the authority to issue a decision himself. The central government has blamed Cossío for instigating the protests. A week of protests at plants and pipelines in Tarija forced Bolivia to cut natural gas exports on Apr. 20 by 75 percent to Argentina and by 10 percent to Brazil. "The national government cannot accept this because it would be a crime against the national economy," said Alex Contreras, a presidential spokesman. "We cannot lose $1.5 million a day because valves are shut off." Later that day, Bolivian troops re-took control of the Transredes natural gas pumping station that had been occupied by protesters demanding more fuel taxes for their region. The army dislodged dozens of protesters from the plant. But officials did not say whether or not they had moved out 300 to 500 protesters gathered outside Brazilian company Petrobras's San Alberto field, which also lies in the Tarija region, near the Argentine border. That evening the San Alberto protesters had vowed to step up the pressure. "We could even determine to seize control of the plant... we're going to take drastic measures," protest leader Delio Aguilera said outside the field. The protests in Tarija stem from a boundary dispute between two districts wrestling for a share of state revenue from one of the country's largest natural gas fields. The stakes are high for regions that sit on natural gas, since energy companies are paying much higher taxes since Morales nationalized the energy industry last year. Local governments share the new energy taxes with the national government and Morales has promised to use the proceeds from South America's second-largest natural gas reserves to fight poverty and kickstart the economy.