Business Week

Colombian Guerrillas to Increase Oil Attacks Before Elections

Jan 19--Colombian guerrillas may renew pipeline attacks before presidential elections in an attempt to tarnish government security that is helping push oil investments to a record, said the head of the nation’s hydrocarbons agency.

19 de enero de 2010

Infrastructure in isolated areas makes an “easy” target for rebels on the run from military offenses and heightened border patrols before the elections in May, said Armando Zamora, director of the National Hydrocarbons Agency.

“The election period always increases these things,” Zamora said in an interview at the agency’s Bogota headquarters. Guerrillas want “to discredit the government. This government has been completely focused on security.”

Colombia’s 57-year-old President Alvaro Uribe, who hasn’t announced whether he will seek a third term, is using military strikes against rebel forces to reduce infrastructure and pipeline sabotage since taking office in 2002. Pipeline assaults tumbled from a peak in 2001, when a single pipeline was attacked 171 times, declining to an undisclosed figure last year from about 11 in 2008, Zamora said.
 
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