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EFE: Bolivian Farmers Are Taking Oil Fields

Submitted June 8, 2005 - 4:22 pm by Al Giordano
The Spaniard news agency EFE reports that a spokesman for the Spanish-Argentine oil company Repsol says that peasant farmers have taken three oil fields from the company today, as part of the growing tsunami of protests to nationalize gas and oil in Bolivia:

Three oil fields and a small oil well belonging to Repsol-YPF in Bolivia had to stop working in the state of Santa Cruz after being occupied by peasant farmers, sources within the Spanish-Argentine company confirmed today to EFE.

Miguel Cirbian, director of foreign relations for Andina, Repesol's affiliate in Bolivia, explained that the occupied fields are in Vibora, Sirari and Yapacani, located 150 kilometers north of the city of Santa Cruz...

The three fields, that together produce between 2,600 and 3,000 barrels a day of oil, were taken on Tuesday by campesinos from Yapacani, 125 miles from the capital of Santa Cruz...

In recent days the farmers also occupied the small oil well at Los Penocos, stopping a production calculated at 150 barrels a day.

He said that the occupation was nonviolent...

In the same region, the Chaco oil company, affiliate of British Petroleum, confirmed to EFE that its fields in Patujusal, Los Cusis and Humberto Roca have been under the campesinos' control since last Friday and have stopped producing between 1,500 and 1,700 barrels daily.

The farmers demand the convocation of a Constituent Assembly and the nationalization of hydrocarbons in Bolivia...

And, I just heard from Authentic Journalist Gissel Gonzales (who is permanently at the side of Oscar Olivera in Cochabamba) that protestors in that city "have just closed the gas valves" of that capital.

Meanwhile, in El Alto, the neighborhood groups have taken the gas company and are distributing the gas, free, to the people of that impoverished city.

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