BOLIVIA WANTS BETTER DEAL FOR NATURAL GAS

Argentina owes Bolivia US$255 million for natural gas consumption in April and May, Bolivia’s Hydrocarbons Minister Luis Alberto Sánchez says, and he is demanding President Mauricio Macri’s government pay up – or at least renegotiate their terms. “To date, the payment of that bill has a delay of two months. It total US$255 million,” Sánchez told reporters. Argentina buys 20.9 million cubic metres of gas per day from Bolivia, the minister said, and it pays US$6 per thousand BTU (British thermal unit). Since Argentina also buys Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from Chile to the tune of US$10 per thousand BTU, Bolivian officials said current prices for their product are unfair. If it requires greater volumes of Bolivian gas, Argentina will have to pay more for it than what it currently does, Sanchez said. “It will have to be a price indexed to what it buys from Chile,” he told Bolivia’s La Razón. “We can not raffle our gas, our gas has a price,” he said.