LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- Aiming to leverage their huge natural gas reserves, left-leaning leaders across South America are talking about building a network of pipelines stretching thousands of miles to feed growing demand and wean themselves from being so dependent on big American and European energy companies.
But their show of brotherhood could backfire if this expensive pipe dream becomes reality, since the network they hope to build would also likely turn the continent's neighbors against each other as they compete for clients.
In Brasilia on Thursday, the presidents of Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela discussed plans for a 5,000-mile pipeline from Caracas to Buenos Aires through Brazil's Amazon rain forest, complete with a link to Bolivia.
''This pipeline is vital for us,'' Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday in Brasilia. He said that Venezuela and Bolivia ''have gas for 200 years'' and can supply fuel to Brazil and Argentina, where demand is increasing for power generation, cooking gas and cars.
But such a pipeline could also set Bolivia and Venezuela on an economic collision course, because Bolivia is already the biggest exporter of gas to Brazil and wants to increase exports to Argentina through another, much shorter proposed pipeline.
By joining the much larger pipeline, Bolivia ''would be tying their production prospects to whatever Chavez wants to dictate,'' said Andres Stepkowski, a Bolivia-based oil industry consultant with four decades of experience in South America.
Chavez dismissed that idea on Thursday: ''There is no desire to compete. I don't think there is any fear in Bolivia, rather there's joy that this project is going to integrate us all, you wait and see.''
Bolivia already lost a big export opportunity with the failure of a multibillion dollar plan to build a pipeline over the Andes to a Pacific Ocean port in Chile, where the gas would be liquefied for shipment to Mexico and Southern California.
Bolivian president-elect Evo Morales, who will be inaugurated Sunday, helped lead a rebellion against that plan in an uprising that ousted then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and killed 60 people. The chief complaint was a long-standing cross-border conflict: many Bolivians still seethe over the 19th century war with Chile that left them landlocked.
California's Sempra Energy turned instead to Indonesia as its supplier, said company spokesman Art Larson.
Bolivia's vice president-elect, Alvaro Garcia Linera, said the Chile project will never happen with Morales as president, but that his administration would like to negotiate for a pipeline that could reach Pacific Rim clients through Peru. That route would be more politically palatable, since the pipeline could also supply destitute Indian communities in Bolivia's highlands where gas is scarce.
But Bolivia may be too late -- Peru is already tapping its own gas fields in the Andes, and hopes to start shipments from its own gas liquification plant in 2007, said Pietro Pitts, editor-in-chief for the Venezuela-based LatinPetroleum.com, which monitors the region's petroleum industry.
If a Bolivia-Peru pipeline is ever built, the two nations ''would be fighting for the same markets, Mexico and the United States. It's a race to see who's going to get that gas first,'' Pitts said. ''Why would Peru want to let Bolivian gas get through unless it charges a lot for the pipeline?''
Petroleum industry experts have many reasons to doubt these pipelines will ever get beyond the planning stages: sky-high construction costs, immense technical challenges, regional political instability, and the brutal economic fact that gas-producing nations won't want to compete with each other for the same markets.
Just last week, the estimated cost of the Venezuela-Argentina pipeline was raised from $10 billion to between $18 billion and $20 billion.
In keeping with Chavez' socialist vision of reducing America's ''imperialist'' political and economic influence, the pipeline would be built and operated by Venezuela's state company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, and Brazil's state-owned petroleum company, Petroleo Brasileiro SA.
Chavez told reporters in Brasilia on Thursday that each country would pay its share of the construction cost and said some unnamed Asian companies had expressed interest. ''I'm sure there will be plenty who want to invest'' he said.
But the technological challenges of building a pipeline through the Amazon -- not to mention environmental concerns -- could push the cost to as much as $40 billion, according to industry experts. And Venezuela's share would be tough for Chavez to pay, even though his country is rolling in cash with nearly $30 billion in foreign reserves as the world's fifth largest oil exporter.
''You try building a pipeline through that mud -- it can be done, but the price would be so outrageous no project can live with it, not even Chavez,'' Stepkowski said.
And Brazil would probably be reluctant to invest heavily, having just committed this month to spend $18 billion to reduce its own dependence on imported gas by developing vast fields off its southeastern coast.
Cost also would inhibit a Bolivia-Peru pipeline. Bolivia's state-owned oil company has been cash-strapped since its industry was privatized in the 1990s, and the foreign companies that took over have mostly frozen their investments due to political uncertainty.
Morales claimed during his campaign that Bolivia's gas wealth had been looted during privatization, and vowed to nationalize the industry. He's softened his tone since his landslide election, but experts say it may take six months before the investment climate becomes more clear.
Companies who were behind the plan to ship Bolivian gas to Chile -- Britain's BG Group PLC; Britain's BP PLC through its 60 percent ownership Pan American Energy; and the Spanish-Argentine Repsol YPF SA -- declined comment on whether they would be interested in financing a Bolivia-Peru pipeline.
If anything, it will probably take years of planning to determine whether the pipelines are ever built, said Larry Chorn, a petroleum engineering professor at the Colorado School of Mines.
''Getting the contract, financing and construction aligned is not a trivial effort,'' he said. ''The entire sequence often requires four to six years before ground breaking.''
