824.6363 ST 2/81
Executive Resolution of March 13, 1937, Cancelling Concession of the Standard Oil Company of Bolivia and Confiscating Its Property29
La Paz, March 13, 1937.—Whereas: The documents of the case against the Standard Oil Co. plainly prove the production of petroleum from the Bermejo wells in 1925 and 1926 and its exportation from the territory of the Republic;
That in the year 1928 the company mentioned on being required to pay the petroleum exploitation taxes showed by various documents not to have produced petroleum and furthermore, of not being in a position of producing it, since they had evidence to the contrary since the exportation of this product had been authorized from the encampment Bermejo in Bolivia to the Agua Blanca in the Argentina;
That (it) ratified its denial of having produced petroleum with the act of not making the required quarterly liquidations in virtue of the contract, manifesting, rather, that there had been no production and therefore there had been no reason (lugar) for presenting any liquidation.
That because of these false statements it avoided the payment of taxes and the delivery of the corresponding royalty to the State defrauding the Government’s interests in a manifest form;
That the contract signed with this company on July 27, 1922 is but a clarification of the former contract on the same matter signed in 1920 with Richmond Levering and Company since in 1922 it was not possible legally to sign a contract in express contraposition to the Organic Petroleum Law of 1921 and that in view of that the Standard Oil Company explained that it was not a matter of a new one but of substitution of that of the Richmond Levering Company which was (issued) before the law, without rescinding it or leaving it without effect.
That the eighteenth clause of the contract of Richmond Levering and Company stipulated that the Government may declare its abrogation or administrative annulment for defrauding the government interests; abrogation which for the capitalists means the loss of all rights to the property which they may have had in the country, which pass to the exclusive property of the State;
That until the form in which the State will administer the oil fields and refineries of the Standard Oil Company with all their annexes, fixtures, machinery etc. is defined, they can be used by the Y. P. F. B.;
[Page 278]It is Resolved [to]
Declare the annulment of all the properties of the Standard Oil Company within the territory of the Republic for proved defrauding of the government interests.
All the property of the company mentioned which is in Bolivian territory at the time of dictating the present Resolution pass[es] to the property of the State.
Until the Government deems it convenient there shall remain in charge of the administration and management of all the property of the Company which in virtue of this annulment passes to the power of the Government official organization “Bolivian Government Petroleum Deposits.”
- Transmitted to the Department by the Minister in Bolivia in his despatch No. 173, March 18; received March 25. For Spanish text of this decree, see Bolivia, Anuario Administrativo de 1987 (La Paz), vol. i, p. 519.↩