Bolivia extreme resources to cover the energy gap that has put the Andean country in a critical situation. President Luis Arce has just inaugurated a state agrofuels plant and Yacimientos Fiscales Petrolófilos Bolivianos (YPFB) launched a tender to search for unconventional oil and gas. This occurs after the Astillero X-1 well, YPFB's great hope, with which it thought to find a trillion cubic feet of gas, failed. In 2023, Bolivia imported 1 billion dollars more hydrocarbons than it exported, due to the drop in its gas sales, which went from 6 billion dollars in 2014 to 1.8 billion last year, a loss of 70%. This imbalance is behind the disappearance of its foreign reserves and its exchange crisis.
Arce pointed out March 26 as “a historic day” because “the biofuels stage begins.” The president presented the plant that was set up in Santa Cruz as an achievement of his “import substitution” policy, specifically of the most expensive imports, fuels, which last year amounted to nearly 3 billion dollars. When fully productive, the plant will produce 1,500 barrels of “biodiesel” from soybean, macrororó and African palm oil. This substance will be consumed mixed in a percentage with conventional petroleum diesel.
Bolivia is a major producer of soybeans, but the other two crops have yet to be developed. That is why the supply of raw materials for this plant and for another that will be inaugurated soon on the other side of the country, in the city of El Alto, far from the agricultural area, worries experts. One of them, Álvaro Ríos, director of Gas Energy Latin America and former Minister of Hydrocarbons, assures that until now there are no firm suppliers to feed the factory. “In addition, this could demand the equivalent of 20% of Bolivian soybean oil exports,” he calculates. In that case, the State “would gain in foreign currency a sum equivalent to what it would lose due to the decrease in its exports,” he ironically says.
Opposition senator Cecilia Requena, a leading figure in Bolivian environmentalism, fears that attempts will be made to break this equation through the growth of the agricultural frontier and greater deforestation. It is estimated that in Bolivia about 800 hectares are deforested daily; It is the third country that destroys the most forest in the world. Along with the inauguration of the plant, the Government launched a line of credit with an interest rate of just 0.5% per year for those who want to produce raw material for biodiesel. The Minister of Hydrocarbons, Franklin Molina, estimated that about 80,000 tons of vegetables per year will be required and admitted that the agricultural frontier will have to expand further. For Requena, the new substance “has nothing 'bio' about it, because it implies deforestation, monoculture, and intensive use of chemicals and water.” The associations of agroindustrial businessmen support the government program although they have said that more could be produced without advancing on the forest if the Government accepts the use of transgenic seeds, prohibited in Bolivia. Incorporating “biotechnology” into their work is a traditional objective of business.
“This plant does not have feasibility studies or an environmental license. It is a political project to solve a problem [the need to import fuels for a value equivalent to 7% of the gross domestic product] that in the end will not even be resolved,” adds Requena. Some experts estimate that, when operational, the two biodiesel plants will produce between 3% and 6% of the country's diesel demand. For its part, the Government assures, contradictorily, that they will replace 48% of the diesel that is currently imported. “A little biodiesel doesn't hurt, but it's just a complement,” says Ríos. Bolivia already consumes a vegetable additive in gasoline, ethanol, with the difference that it is produced by the private sugarcane sector. In its urgency to reduce the amount of imports, the Government authorized the mixing of up to 25% ethanol in the most common gasoline, but YPFB had to promise that it will not make this addition for now, since drivers protested. According to commercial vehicle manuals, the admissible mixture is 12%, although some South American countries exceed it. The proportion of vegetable additive that will be incorporated into diesel can also generate controversy.
For desperate times, desperate measures. YPFB launched a tender to prospecting companies to evaluate the possible exploitation of unconventional oil and gas, that is, retained in shale rocks and compact sands, in an area of 225 square kilometers in the Warnes province, in the Santa Cruz region. . Unconventional hydrocarbons are exploited using the technique of “fracking” or injection of high-pressure water to fracture the geological formations in which they are embedded and “release” them. Ríos believes that this project is “the slap of a drowned man,” because although Bolivia may have these hydrocarbons, it does not have the conditions to exploit them. As the experience of the two countries that widely use this technology, the United States and Argentina, shows, for unconventional oil and gas to be profitable and “a barrel does not cost 300 dollars,” Ríos illustrates, it is necessary to work with more superficial deposits. than the traditional ones in Bolivia and located in desert places with a large amount of groundwater. “It is a utopia,” says the analyst. Requena, for his part, hopes this will be the case, because “fracking is devastating for local and regional water systems. Losing water sources is precisely what should not be done in a context of climate crisis,” he explains.
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