What are the financial consequences of opposition groups disrupting Bolivias natural gas pipeline?
It’s huge. It’s more of a problem for Brazil than it is for Bolivia: they get half their gas from Bolivia and more than half in the industrial region of Sao Paolo. For Bolivia it is quite a lot of money. It is a $100 million estimated just to fix [the gas pipeline] and $8 million per day of revenue lost as well. But it is even worse than that because the opposition can really sabotage the whole economy. Everything that the government is doing in terms of the next five years as far as extending gas supply to Brazil and Argentina, if Bolivia can’t be a reliable gas supplier then those countries are going to have to look elsewhere. So it is a form of serious sabotage. The [Morales government] is calling it “terrorism.” Will Morales’s mandate enable him to act more forcefully toward the breakaway provinces or is he going to have to wait for the constitutional referendum in December? I think he is going to have to do something. The government has been very pacifist and I think they don’t ge
