Colombia Pipeline Bombed by FARC After Ecuador Attack

(Bloomberg) — Colombian rebels bombed an oil pipeline and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he may seize local assets of the neighboring country’s companies after a Colombian raid into Ecuador killed a rebel leader.

The bombing and Chavez’s nationalization threats may be the start of reprisals for the March 1 air raid on Ecuadorean soil that killed the second-in-command of Colombia’s biggest guerrilla group. Escalation of the conflict could cut the more than $5 billion in annual trade between Venezuela and Colombia.


“This is definitely the beginning of reprisals against Colombia and it is likely to continue,” Edgar Jimenez, an equity analyst at Stanford Bolsa y Banca in Bogota, said in a telephone interview.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, bombed the Transandino pipeline in Putumayo province, taking it out of service for at least three days, Colombia’s Vice Minister of Mining and Energy Manuel Maiguashca said.

Bloomberg