With the nationalization of Bolivia’s energy resources, the two biggest victims in this are socialist Brazil and socialist Spain.

Franco, I am still waiting for you to give us word from Spain on this Bolivian travesty, so in the meantime, consider Brazil:

Evo Morales is determined to play approximately the same tormenting role to Brazil that Hugo Chavez plays to the U.S. – that of underdeveloped big energy supplier that revels in politicizing the energy supply and seeking very high prices.

Bolivia is actually better positioned than Venezuela for that nuisance role, because natural gas, which Bolivia exports to Brazil, is more locally price-sensitive. Whoever sells natgas can call the price more easily than an oil exporter because natural gas is much less fungible than oil. Natural gas must be transfered by special pipelines to specific locations – not just shipped out any old way from any old location as oil can be. Adding to the difficult situation for Brazil, it buys half its natgas from Bolivia, while the US buys only 12% of its oil from Venezuela. Brazil is in a much worse situation than the U.S. regarding its energy tyrant.

Castro stands by and basks in the glory of it all. His ‘sons’ Chavez and Morales are well on their way to laying the West low by controlling the energy, so he must imagine.

Luis Alfonso Assumpcao, at Swimming Against The Red Tide has some very interesting thoughts and analyses about this crisis for Brazil in this posting here.

Alek Boyd at VCrisis has more thoughts on this travesty here.

UPDATE: Spain Herald‘s blog (formerly Iberian Notes) reports that Prime Minister Zapatero is getting hell from his opposition for suckering up to Evo Morales all this time. They’re losing money now! The item is here.