The head of Bolivia’s state run petrol enterprise YPFB announced that since the arrival of President Evo Morales in 2006, the state has invested US$10.1 billion in the development of the country’s hydrocarbons sector. 

Carlos Villega, President of YPFB, announced “now it is time to gather what we have harvested, these years have been very important for the hydrocarbons sector, we have enjoyed a resolute support, an important support of the Bolivian people, of the national government, and of President Evo Morales.”

President Morales was first elected president in 2005 on promises to nationalize the country’s enormous natural gas reserves.

His election came just two years after Bolivia suffered a bloody conflict known as “Black October” or “the Gas War” in 2003, when then President Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada ordered the violent suppression of demonstrators opposed to a plan to export Bolivia’s natural gas to the United States through neighboring Chile.

Dozens of demonstrators were killed in the repression that many have described as a massacre, and every year they are commemorated as “heroes of the gas.”

President Evo Morales has utilized state resources from the nationalized natural gas reserves to fund a number of social programs in Bolivia that have led to what the U.N. has described as the greatest relative decrease in poverty in Latin America.

YPFB is now pursuing a policy of industrialization of the country’s natural gas reserves, with hopes of exporting products with added value rather than solely exporting raw natural materials.

With elections just a month away, Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism party, MAS, has placed the nationalization and development of the country’s natural gas reserves as the hallmark accomplishment of the President’s two-term tenure.

 President Morales is currently leading election polls by as much as 30 percent, and is widely anticipated to win Bolivia’s October 12th elections.