Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Bolivian army soldiers monitor the premises of an oil refinery, following the
nationalization of Bolivia's gas and oil industry. In May 2006, Bolivia's President
Evo Morales decreed that all foreign energy firms must agree to channel all their
sales through the Bolivian state or else leave the country, and gave a six-month
deadline.
The main foreign oil firms operating in Bolivia then were Brazil's Petrobras, the
Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF (shown here), British companies British
Gas and BP, France's Total, and the US Exxon Mobil Corporation.
failure to stop Iran taking control of two small islands in the Strait of
Hormuz, when Britain withdrew all its forces from the Gulf in 1971.
Arguably, BP which was progressively privatized from the mid-1970s to
the mid-1990s suffered more than it gained from UK government owner-
ship.
Taking over local BP assets became a convenient way of showing dis-
pleasure with London. Another example of this came in 1979 when the
Nigerian government nationalised BP's assets in Nigeria, in order to put
pressure on Britain to take a tougher line in dealing with the breakaway
white government of Rhodesia. Meanwhile, Shell, with its British identity
diluted by being in harness with Royal Dutch Petroleum, was allowed to
stay on in Nigeria, as have many other IOCs.
The era of nationalizing foreign oil company assets is by no means
over, especially when a rising oil price increases the desire of host gov-
