Bolivia says to look for Amazon oil with Venezuela

The state oil firms of Venezuela and Bolivia hope to start exploration in an Amazon national park next year as part of joint projects involving an investment of more than $1 billion, Bolivia’s government said on Wednesday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a close ideological ally of Bolivia’s leftist leader, Evo Morales, and state-run PDVSA promised to invest in Bolivia after Morales nationalized his impoverished country’s energy industry last year.

Bolivian Energy Minister Carlos Villegas said the investment would materialize in the first half of 2008 and would be channeled through Petroandina, a company formed by the powerful PDVSA and its smaller Bolivian counterpart, YPFB.

He said Petroandina would start exploring for oil next year in Bolivia’s Madidi, a vast national park that stretches from the Andes to the Amazon basin and is said to be one of the most biodiverse areas on earth.

“I hope that in about eight months the work will already be getting started … it inspires great hopes that we’ll get good results in the north of La Paz province (Madidi),” Villegas said in comments distributed by his press office.

Reuters Alternet