Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) is a

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

state-owned enterprise A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a business entity created or owned by a national or local government, either through an executive order or legislation. SOEs aim to generate profit for the government, prevent private sector monopolies, provide goo ...

dedicated to the exploration, exploitation, refining, industrialization, distribution and commercialization of

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

and derived products. It was created on December 21, 1936 under a government decree during the presidency of David Toro. YPFB is one of the biggest corporations in

History

Following Bolivia's defeat in the

Chaco War The Chaco War (, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada Gonzalo Daniel Sánchez de Lozada Sánchez Bustamante (born 1 July 1930), often referred to as Goni, is a Bolivian-American businessman and politician who served as the 61st president of Bolivia from 1993 to 1997 and from 2002 to 2003. A membe ...

, YPFB was broken up and largely sold off. "Capitalized" oil companies were formed from YPFB properties under the capitalization (

privatization Privatization (rendered privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation w ...

) reform. The biggest parts of YPFB, including existing oil and gas infrastructure, went to Chaco S.A., owned in part by

Amoco Amoco ( ) is a brand of filling station, fuel stations operating in the United States and owned by British conglomerate BP since 1998. The Amoco Corporation was an American chemical and petroleum, oil company, founded by Standard Oil Company i ...

(and later,

British Petroleum BP p.l.c. (formerly The British Petroleum Company p.l.c. and BP Amoco p.l.c.; stylised in all lowercase) is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. It is one of the oil and gas " supermajors" and one of ...

and Argentine capital operating as Bridas). The companies were owned 80 percent by direct private investors and 20 percent by all the citizens of Bolivia over the age of 21 and resident in Bolivia. This was also the case with the capitalizations of the other four principal state-owned companies. YPFB remained at that time as a state-owned service company for the hydrocarbon sector. Since the election of president

Evo Morales Juan Evo Morales Ayma (; born 26 October 1959) is a Bolivian politician, trade union organizer, and former cocalero activist who served as the 65th president of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019. Widely regarded as the country's first president to come ...

, the privatized oil companies have been partially nationalized. All its subsidiaries operate as private companies, most of which trade on the Bolivian Stock Exchange, but YPFB and the government has effective control over them.

References

External links

Official site
n Spanish Oil and gas companies of Bolivia

Non-renewable resource companies established in 1936 Energy companies established in 1936 1936 establishments in Bolivia Government-owned companies of Bolivia {{Bolivia-company-stub