Bolivia: Challenges along path of 'governing by obeying the people'

Federico Fuentes, February 19, 2012

A new twist in the turbulent saga surrounding a proposed roadway through indigenous land has reignited a debate raging throughout Bolivia since the middle of last year.

The controversial highway ― which would cut through the Isiboro-Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) ― has been at the centre of protests and counter-protests. It has polarised Bolivian society and divided indigenous groups that are the heart of the Evo Morales government’s social base.

Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, was first elected in 2005 on the back of a wave of anti-neoliberal uprisings. An elected constituent assembly drew up a new constitution, adopted by referendum, that grants unprecedented rights to the nation's indigenous majority.

But the task of transforming the poor Andean nation, the victim of hundreds of years of colonial pillage, comes with serious obstacles. The TIPNIS dispute, in which different sectors of the indigenous population have competing views and interests, reveals one such challenge.

The source of renewed debate was the February 9 decision by parliament to pass a law approving a process to consult indigenous communities within TIPNIS about the roadway. This places the future of the project, which the government views as a strategic necessity to develop Bolivia, in the hands of those that will be most affected.

The government has also called on Bolivia’s main social organisations to help draft a new law to set the legal parametres for future consultations, a right enshrined in the new constitution.

The aim is to set up a framework for greater popular participation and overcome the rising number of local conflicts of various development projects.

These moves may help rebuild fractured alliances and expand forms of participatory democracy. Or they may deepen rifts among Morales supporters.

A key factor will be how well the government isolates increasingly intransigent forces on both sides of the debate.

Two marches, two laws

The conflict first erupted in July last year. The TIPNIS Subcentral the legal bearers of the TIPNIS collective land title that is home to Yuracare, Chiman and Moxe indigenous communities said it would march onto the capital La Paz to oppose the proposed roadway.

Community leaders raised the lack of consultation and concerns over the impact the road could have on local communities.

The proposed march quickly gained support from two important indigenous organisations: the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB), which unites 34 lowland indigenous peoples, and the Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), comprised of 16 small indigenous communities.

After almost 70 days and a police attack, the march reached La Paz in October. Protesters succeeded in getting parliament to approve a law banning a highway through TIPNIS.

On enacting the law, Morales said his government was making good on its slogan of “governing by obeying”. He said those within TIPNIS who supported the highway would have to take their views up with their community leaders.

By December, a counter-march had been initiated by the Indigenous Council of the South (CONISUR), which groups some of the indigenous communities within TIPNIS and in “Poligono Seven” (a zone within TIPNIS but not part of the collective title).

Poligono Seven, whose population greatly outnumbers that of local indigenous peoples within the rest of TIPNIS, is mainly home to outside indigenous campesinos (peasants) who, searching for land to till, have settled in the area.

The CONISUR march received support from Bolivia’s three main national indigenous campesino groups and nearby coca-grower unions. All said the highway is essential to providing their communities with access to basic services and markets at which to sell their produce.

When the CONISUR march arrived in La Paz 39 days later, the government encouraged leaders of the first march to meet with CONISUR representatives to try to resolve the dispute.

When the request was rejected by CIDOB and the TIPNIS Subcentral, parliamentarians began meeting with CONISUR to discuss a new law to allow TIPNIS communities to decide the project's fate.

However, critics of the new law, including CIDOB and TIPNIS Subcentral leaders, say the purpose of the consultation process is to reverse the government's decision after the first march and open the way to allow the road to be built.

CIDOB leaders have pledged to organise another march to La Paz to oppose the recent moves. They have ruled out taking part in drafting a general law on consultations.

Let the people decide

The TIPNIS dispute reveals two key dilemmas the Morales government faces in making the concept of "governing by obeying" real.

Bolivian vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera said in a November 28 speech: "To govern by obeying is to affirm every day that the sovereign is not the state. It is the people, who express themselves not only every five years by the vote, but each day they speak and put forward their needs, expectations and collective requirements.

However, as Garcia Linera noted and the TIPNIS dispute reveals, "the people are not something homogeneous. There are social classes, there are identities, there are regions. The people are very diverse.

There is a dilemma arising from tensions created when a project strategic to overall national development encounters resistance from those who will be locally affected.

Few in Bolivia, including those opposed to the current proposal, question the need for a roadway to connect Bolivia's isolated northern Amazonian region with the country's centre and west.

Given this, Garcia Linera said the role of those in government is not to substitute for the people but to harmonise the voices of the people, to synthesise its concerns.

Analysing the government's handling of the TIPNIS dispute, Garcia Linera said February 4 the government had made two errors. These were, first, not consulting communities about the highway, and then failing to consult communities on the law that banned any highway through TIPNIS.

He said: “We have to correct both errors, and what is the best way to correct both errors? Let the [people] that live there decide… that is the most democratic, the most just manner …

“The [people] there, those that suffer, should decide if there should be a roadway.”

Such an approach, combined with calling on Bolivia's social movements to help draft a general law on consultation, stands in stark contrast to the record of previous neoliberal governments.

However, implementing this complex and difficult task will require overcoming two immediate challenges.

Challenges and opportunities

The first is confronting the growing alliance between some indigenous leaders opposed to Morales government policies such as the roadway and elements of Bolivia’s traditional elites. These elites were behind the wave of violence unleashed against indigenous peoples during the first Morales term.

While quick to denounce the Morales government, CIDOB leaders recently praised the right-wing Santa Cruz governor. They signed an agreement providing the indigenous organisation with a post in the Santa Cruz governorship.

The agreement has drawn fire even from CIDOB allies. On January 26, TIPNIS Subcentral president Fernando Vargas publicly rejected the move, saying CIDOB leaders had “put their foot in it” by signing such an agreement.

But CIDOB’s deal with the Santa Cruz governor does not seem to be an aberration. A recent string of events point to a burgeoning union between these traditional enemies.

This includes the alliance forged between indigenous deputies and right-wing parties in the Santa Cruz departmental council against the Morales-led Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), a favour repaid with more than US$3.5 million for development projects in CIDOB communities.

There was also the comment by CIDOB leader Lazaro Tacoo on December 14 that indigenous people should “forgive” the Santa Cruz elite for its violent attacks against them, “as only now are they recognising the importance of indigenous peoples”.

The government faces the challenge of isolating those forces seeking alliances with the violent right wing and rebuilding a strong alliance with lowland indigenous groups.

However, Pablo Stefanoni, a critical sympathiser of the Morales government, wrote in a February 13 Pagina Siete article that this will require confronting "the idea held by a sector of the government of imposing a strategic defeat on the lowlands indigenous peoples in order to advance with development projects".

This perspective is seen in the continued insistence of some government officials that the only possible path for the roadway is the one proposed.

However, Pablo Solon, a former Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations and critic of the government’s treatment of the TIPNIS issue, said it is incumbent on the government to prove that there is no alternative route. This is needed to show the consultation process is being carried out in good faith.

Solon proposed a commission made up of representatives from the TIPNIS Subcentral, CONISUR, the governors of Beni and Cochabamba and the government, along with engineers and environmentalists.

Such a body could study all possible alternative routes, taking into consideration the economic, environmental and social impact of each one.

“Only on the basis of all these alternatives is it possible to then carry out a serious and responsible consultation,” Solon said.

Such a move would complement other positive steps that have been taken towards defusing tensions. These include the February 14 announcement by the president of the Bolivian senate that the consultation process will not involve outside indigenous groups that have settled in Poligono Seven.

Instead, the process will be coordinated in agreement between the government and the three indigenous peoples within TIPNIS.

The proposal to directly involve different social movements in collectively debating how best to carry out consultation represents a further advance in expanding decision-making powers to local communities and social movements.

It may also prove an important step in broadening the necessary debate on how to flesh out the constitution’s provisions on indigenous autonomy and land reform.

This entails dealing with complex issues, such as how best to tackle poverty and develop Bolivia’s economy while protecting the environment and the rights of indigenous communities.

La Jornada interviews Bolivia’s vice president Alvaro Garcia Linera. Moving beyond capitalism is a universal task

By Felipe Stuart Cournoyer. Luis Hernández Navarro interviews Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera.

Introduction by Felipe Stuart Cournoyer

Bolivia’s Vice President Álvaro García Linera brought a message of hope and anti-imperialist commitment to Mexico in the first week of February. Speaking to an overflow assembly of students and university personnel at Mexico City’s UNAM (National Autonomous University), he said that the government led by President Evo Morales welcomes social movement protests and conflict. The more, the better.

“The struggle is our nourishment, our peace. It does not overwhelm us. Absolute calm frightens us. Our opponents believe the struggle will wear us down. On the contrary, it nourishes us.”

The UNAM’s Economics Research Institute (IIE) sponsored the vice president’s address on “Bolivia: achievements and challenges of transformation.”

García Linera described the MAS (Movement towards Socialism) administration as a “government of social movements.” Nevertheless, he recognized that in the past three years “tensions” have arisen between the government and social movements, between the need for industrialization and for protecting the environment, and between collective social needs and particular corporatist or sectoral interests.

“I am not complaining. I am merely describing what is happening in a revolutionary process. We have chosen to ride these contradictions, always keeping this in mind – everything that favors the broad masses is suitable, everything that enables common action is suitable. Sometimes you stumble, and certainly over time other kinds of contradictions will emerge… [but] any revolutionary process stagnates if it does not have contradictions.”¹

The Mexican daily La Jornada featured an interview with García Linera in its February 7 edition. Journalist Luis Hernández Navarro, who conducted the interview, described the Bolivian vice president as “one of today’s most important Latin American left intellectuals.”

“He has theorized the Bolivian experience of transformation as no one has done, that is, with originality, depth and freshness. And today the Bolivian experience is an obligatory and ever stronger point of reference for the popular movement in Latin America. García Linera has a profound but far from doctrinaire command of classical Marxism.”

García Linera analyzes the revolution underway in Bolivia as a “post-neoliberal” and “post-capitalist transition” led by its indigenous majority.

Today, he argues, the “subjects of politics and the real institutions of power are now found in the indigenous, plebian arena. Today, the real power of the state is located within what were once called ‘conflict scenarios’ such as trade unions and communities. And those previously condemned to be silent subaltern subjects are today’s policy makers.”

García Linera thinks that the current transformation underway in Bolivia is more profound than any previous revolutionary upsurge in his landlocked country. How far can this emancipation struggle go? He believes the answer to that question is to be found not just in Bolivia, but in the interplay with other struggles throughout the continent. “We place our hope of moving beyond capitalism in the expansion of agrarian and urban communitarianism, knowing that this is a universal task, not just that of a single country.” In that vein, he points to the need for revolutionary governments to ally regionally and act as supranational states, while always respecting national sovereignty and cultures.

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Translated for Axis of Logic by Felipe Stuart Cournoyer

Journalist Luis Hernández Navarro’s interview with Álvaro García Linera

LHN – You have governed Bolivia for six years. Has progress towards decolonization of the state really been accomplished?

AGL – In Bolivia, the fundamental fact we have experienced has been the change in role of the people making up the demographic majority in the past and today – the indigenous peoples. Previously, because of the brutality of the [European] invasion and the burden from centuries of domination, which permeated the outlook of both the ruling classes and the subservient classes, indigenous peoples were condemned to be peasants, toilers, informal artisans, porters or waiters. Now they are ministers (both men and women), deputies, senators, directors of public companies, constitution writers, supreme court magistrates, governors, and president.

Decolonization is a process of dismantling the institutional, social, cultural, and symbolic structures that tied peoples’ daily activities to the interests, hierarchies, and narratives imposed by external powers. Colonialism means territorial domination imposed by force that over time becomes “second nature.” It becomes etched into “normal” behavior, daily routine, and the mundane perceptions of the dominated peoples. Therefore, dismantling the machinery of domination requires a lot of time. In particular, time is needed to modify domination that has come to be the common outlook, to modify the cultural habits of people.

The organizational forms of the contemporary indigenous movement – communal, agrarian, and union – with their style of assembly deliberation, traditional rotation of posts, and, in some cases, common control of means of production, are today the centers of political decision making and a good part of the economy in Bolivia.

Today, to influence the state budget or to know the government agenda, it does not at all help to rub shoulders with senior officials of the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, or U.S. and European embassies. Today the state power circuits pass through the debates and decisions of indigenous, worker and neighborhood assemblies.

The subjects of politics and the real institutions of power are now found in the indigenous, plebian arena. Today, the real power of the state is located within what were once called “conflict scenarios” such as trade unions and communities. And those previously condemned to be silent subaltern subjects are today’s policy makers.

This opening-up of the horizon of historical possibility to indigenous peoples – so they can be farmers, laborers, bricklayers, house workers, but also foreign ministers, senators, ministers or justices – is the greatest and most egalitarian social revolution in Bolivia since its founding. The displaced noble ruling classes use an arid and derogatory phrase to designate the “holocaust” of these last six years: “Indians in power.”

LHN – How should the economic model that has been implemented be characterized? Is it an expression of 21st century socialism? Is it a form of post-neoliberalism?

AGL – Basically, it is a post-neoliberal model, a post-capitalist transition. Led by the indigenous movement, it has involved regaining control of natural resources that were in foreign hands (gas, oil, some minerals, water, electricity) and putting them in state hands, while other resources such as government lands, large estates, and forests have come under community control of indigenous peoples and farmers.

Today the state is the main wealth generator in the country. That wealth is not valorized as capital; it is redistributed throughout society through bonuses, rents, direct social benefits to the population, the freezing of utility rates and basic fuel prices, and subsidies to agricultural production. We try to prioritize wealth as use value over exchange value. In this regard, the state does not behave as a collective capitalist in the state-capitalist sense, but acts as a redistributor of collective wealth among the working classes and as a facilitator of the material, technical and associative capacities of farmer, community, and urban craft production modes. We place our hope of moving beyond capitalism in this expansion of agrarian and urban communitarianism, knowing that this is a universal task, not just that of a single country.

LHN – How does the process of regional integration appear to you in Bolivia? What role do the United States and Spain play? What influence do China, Russia, and Iran have?

AGL –The Latin American continent is going through an exceptional historical cycle. Many of the governments are revolutionary and progressive. Neoliberal governments tend to appear as reactionary. And at the same time, the Latin American economy has undertaken internal initiatives that are enabling it to vigorously address the effects of the global crisis. In particular, the importance of regional markets and links with Asia has defined a new kind of continental economic architecture. We must concentrate on deepening this regional articulation through projecting, if possible, a kind of regional state composed of states and nations. Let’s act as a regional state with respect to utilization and global negotiation of the great strategic wealth we possess (oil, minerals, lithium, water, agriculture, biodiversity, light industry, a young and skilled workforce). Internally, let’s act with respect for state sovereignty and the regional national identities found on the continent. Only then can we have our own voice and force in the course of the dynamic globalization of social life.

LHN – Is Washington actively sabotaging the ongoing transformation in Bolivia?

AGL – The U.S. government has never accepted that Latin American nations define their own destiny because it has always considered us as part of its area of political influence regarding its territorial security, and as its catchment basin of natural and social wealth. It reacts to any dissent with this colonial approach by targeting the insurgent nation. The sovereignty of the people is the number one enemy of U.S. policy.

This has happened to Bolivia over these last six years. We have nothing against the U.S. government or its people. But no one – absolutely no one – should come here and tell us what to do, say or think. We cannot accept that. And when, as a government of social movements, we began to lay the material foundations of state sovereignty with the nationalization of gas, when we broke the embarrassing influence of the embassies in ministerial decisions, when we defined a policy of national unity to confront the openly separatist tendencies latent in regional oligarchies, the U.S. embassy not only financially supported the conservative forces, but organized and led them politically, brutally interfering in our internal affairs. That forced us to expel the ambassador and later that country’s drug enforcement agency (DEA).

Since then conspiracy mechanisms have become more sophisticated: they use non-governmental organizations, infiltrate indigenous groups through third parties, and try to divide the popular sectors, while projecting parallel leaderships. This was recently demonstrated by the flurry of calls from the [U.S.] embassy itself to some indigenous leaders of the Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure (TIPNIS - Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park) march last year.

Come what may, we seek respectful diplomatic relations, but we are also on guard to repel foreign intervention, whether “high” or “low” intensity.

LHN – Some sectors on the left have argued that the conservative bloc has managed to regroup and take the offensive, while the social movement that brought the MAS to power has been absorbed by institutional politics. Is this a correct assessment?

AGL – Today’s conservative bloc, comprised of foreign-oriented oligarchies, has no alternative project for society, no project capable of articulating a general will to power. The current Bolivian political horizon is marked by a virtuous tripod – plurinationality (indigenous peoples and nations in command of the state), autonomy (territorial devolution of power), and a pluralist economy (state-articulated coexistence of various modes of production).

With the temporary defeat of the right-wing neoliberal economic and social project, what today characterizes Bolivian politics is the emergence of “creative tensions” within the national-popular bloc actually in power. After the great moments of mass ascendancy, during which a universal ideal of great transformations was launched, the social movement in some cases is now undergoing a process of corporative retreat. For a time local interests tend to prevail over national concerns, or organizations get caught up in internal struggles for control of public posts. But new, unforeseen themes on how to lead the revolutionary process also emerge. Such is the case with the issue of defending the rights of Mother Earth where tensions arise in relation to popular demands to industrialize natural resource use.

As you see, it’s a matter of contradictions among the people, of tensions that yield to collective debate on how to carry forward revolutionary changes. And that is healthy, it is democratic, and it is the fulcrum for life-giving renewal of action by social movements. Even though these contradictions could be used by imperialism and the lurking rightist forces that in a transvestite ventriloquist style project their long-term interests through some popular subjects and through discourse that is seemingly anti-globalization and environmental.

LHN – In September last year, the march of indigenous peoples in defense of TIPNIS and against building a road was repressed by the police. This was presented to the public as a loss of indigenous support for the government of Evo Morales. It was stated that the Bolivian government persisted in building the road because it had received financial support from the Brazilian oil firm OAS.² Is this true?

AGL – The indigenous peoples of Bolivia, as in Guatemala, are a majority of the inhabitants. Sixty-two percent of Bolivians are indigenous peoples. The main indigenous nations are the Aymara and Quechua, with about six million people located mainly in the highlands, valleys, the Yungas zones, and also in the lowlands. Other indigenous nations are the Guarani, Moxenos, Yuracare, Tsimane, Ayoreos, and another 29 who live in the lowlands of the Amazon, Chaco, and Chiquitania regions. The total population of these low-lying nations is estimated at between 250,000 and 300,000 people.

The conflict over TIPNIS has involved some indigenous peoples of the lowlands, but the government retains support from indigenous peoples of the highlands and valleys, who make up 95 percent of Bolivia’s indigenous population. And most of the mobilized indigenous people were leaders from other regions, not actually from TIPNIS. They have systematic support of environmental NGOs, many of them funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), plus the backing of the major private television communication networks, owned by old members of the separatist oligarchy – networks that have a strong influence on the formation of middle-class public opinion. More recently, another march has arrived in La Paz, also comprised of lowland indigenous people and a larger number of TIPNIS inhabitants. They are demanding the construction of the highway through the park, arguing that it is not possible that they be sidelined without their rights to health, education, and transport, which they can today access only after days of walking.

The problem is complex. Entangled in it are issues specific to revolutionary debate, with themes such as the delicate balance between respect for Mother Earth and the urgent need to link the country together after centuries in which its regions have been isolated. It involves the discussion of the highland indigenous people’s organic relation with, and their leadership in, the plurinational state – which is different from the still ambiguous relationship the lowlands indigenous peoples have with the plurinational state.

But what is also involved is the regional strategy of the Santa Cruz oligarchy to prevent this road, which would [once in operation] deprive them of corporate control of economic activity throughout the Amazon region. The U.S. is interested in controlling the Amazon as its reservoir of water and biodiversity, and in promoting divisions between indigenous leaders in order to create conditions for expelling indigenous peoples from state power. There is also the interest of some NGOs that are accustomed to using the parks for large private businesses.

In any case, in the midst of this tangle of interests, we as a government must be able to democratically resolve internal tensions, and to uncover and neutralize counterrevolutionary interests that often dress in pseudo-revolutionary costume.

LHN – Why build this road despite the opposition of a portion of the population?

AGL – For three reasons. First, to ensure that the indigenous population of the park has access to constitutional rights and guarantees: to safe water so that children do not die from stomach infections; to schools with teachers who teach in their language, preserving their culture and enriching it with other cultures. To provide access to markets for their produce without having to navigate on rafts for a week to be able to sell their rice or to buy salt at ten times the price charged in any neighborhood convenience store.

The second reason is that the road will for the first time link the Amazon region, a third of Bolivia, with other regions of the valleys and highlands. Bolivia has kept a third of its territory isolated. That has allowed state sovereignty to be replaced by the power of landlords, foreign logging firms, or drug dealers.

And the third reason is geopolitical. The separatist tendencies of the oligarchy, who were about to split apart Bolivia in 2008, were contained because they were defeated politically during the September coup that year, and because some of its material agro-industrial base was taken over by the state.

However, the reactionary separatist tendencies still have one last economic pillar, the control of the Amazonian economy. In order to reach the rest of the country, Amazonians must rely on processing and financing by firms under the control of oligarchs based in Santa Cruz. A road that directly links the Amazon with the valleys and highlands would radically reconfigure the structure of regional economic power, breaking down the last material base of the separatists and leading to a new geo-economic axis for the state. The paradox of this is that history has placed some leftists in the position of becoming the best and most vocal advocates for the most conservative and reactionary interests in the country.

LHN – Some argue that Bolivia remains a supplier of raw materials in the international market and that the development model in practice (which some analysts have termed ‘extractive’) does not question this role. Is this true? Does it involve a phase of accumulation that is accompanied by a redistribution of income?

AGL – Neither the extractive or non-extractive approach, nor industrialism is a vaccine against injustice, exploitation, and inequality. In themselves, they are neither productive modes nor ways of managing wealth. They are technical systems for processing nature through labor. And depending on how they use these technical systems, on how they manage wealth thus produced, economic regimes may have more or less justice, with or without labor exploitation.

Original Source (in Spanish): La Jornada

Republished from Axis of Logic

Notes

1. See Emir Olivares Alonso’s February 8 report “La revolución en Bolivia, a caballo de las contradicciones, dice García Linera” in the Mexican daily La Jornada.

2. Translator's note: According to its website, OAS is a heavy construction and engineering company, not an oil company. Based in São Paulo, Brazil, it operates in fifteen countries of South and Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa. See also Business News Americas.

Bolivia Seizes Pan American Energy’s Stake in Gas Field

By Alex Emery and Matthew Craze

Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Bolivia seized Pan American Energy LLC’s stake in the $1.6 billion Caipipendi natural-gas project, saying the Argentine company failed to meet investment targets.

State oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos, known as YPFB, will take over Pan American’s 25 percent stake in the field, Energy Minister Juan Jose Sosa said today. YPFB will evaluate Buenos Aires-based Pan American’s investment to date in a bid to conciliate, Sosa said.

“Pan American hasn’t contributed its percentage, so we’re carrying out an obligatory transfer of the contract to a YPFB subsidiary,” Sosa said in a broadcast by La Paz-based Radio Panamericana.

Oil and gas output has fallen in the Andean nation since President Evo Morales raised taxes and started seizing refineries and fields in 2006 to increase state control over Bolivia’s natural resources. Private investment in the industry plunged 69 percent to $271 million in 2009, the latest data available, from $865 million a decade earlier, according to YPFB.

“Bolivia has been very clear about a state-controlled model,” Moody’s analyst Gabriel Torres said in a telephone interview from New York. “But they need to move to the next level and not make it harder for investors.”

Moody’s rates Bolivia B1, four levels below investment grade.

Argentina Contract

Repsol YPF SA and BG Group Plc control the Caipipendi field, which is slated to begin production this year. Bolivia is counting on the field to help boost the country’s natural-gas output by 40 percent to 66 million cubic meters a day by 2014 to meet its supply contracts with Brazil and Argentina.

Bolivia agreed in 2010 to almost quadruple gas supply to Argentina to 27.7 million cubic meters per day by 2026. Bolivia currently exports 30 million cubic meters of gas a day to Brazil and 7.7 million cubic meters to Argentina, according to YPF.

Pan American won’t comment until it’s officially notified of the government’s decision, a company official who declined to be named citing company policy, said by telephone. Repsol spokesman Kristian Rix declined to comment in an e-mailed response to questions. BG didn’t immediately return telephone calls seeking comment.

Natural gas for February delivery rose 2.9 cents to $2.554 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gas, which is down 44 percent from a year ago, fell to $2.231 on Jan. 23, the lowest price since February 2002.