Bolivia takes over four energy companies

Bolivia will pay $43 million to take controlling stakes in four energy companies, one through an agreement with Spanish oil company Repsol and others through state decrees, the government said on Thursday.

Bolivia’s state energy company YPFB signed a deal with Repsol, agreeing to pay $6.3 million to acquire enough shares to give it a majority stake in Repsol’s Andina, one of Bolivia’s biggest energy companies.
The announcement came exactly two years after leftist President Evo Morales launched his nationalization of Bolivia’s energy industry in a bid to increase government income from the country’s rich natural gas fields.

Morales on Thursday also decreed the state takeover of natural gas producer Empresa Petrolera Chaco, held by British oil giant BP; the Transredes pipeline company belonging to Cayman Islands-based Ashmore Energy International; and storage and fuel transport firm CLHB, controlled by German and Peruvian firms.

Guardian