Bolivian Foreign Minister Armando Loaiza said here Friday that his country wishes with a "firm will" to reach a long-term agreement to supply Argentina with more natural gas.

"It is a key priority for us to strengthen this eventual agreement with Argentina," said the minister.

Loaiza made the statement at the sidelines of the 25th meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Group of Rio just concluded in Pilar, 60 km northwest of Argentine capital Buenos Aires.

Loaiza said Argentine Planning Minister Julio de Vido will hold a meeting on Wednesday with Bolivia's energy authorities in Santa Cruz de la Sierra to further the negotiations.

Loaiza hoped that the meeting could help "set basic principles and an agenda for reaching an agreement," noting that "the issue of the (gas) price is yet to be discussed. What has to prevail is a deep political will to seek the energy integration."

On Thursday, Loaiza held a meeting in Buenos Aires with his Argentine counterpart Rafael Bielsa and later with De Vido to advance the negotiations aimed at having Argentina agree to import from Bolivia 20 million cubic meters of gas a day.

Since 2004, Argentina has been in an energy crisis for want of gas. It then started to import Bolivian gas and is seeking a long-term agreement to acquire gas from the neighbouring country.

Bolivia boasts 53 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, the second largest in Latin America after Venezuela. Now it ships up to 7.0 million cubic meters of natural gas to Argentina daily.

Argentina announced the construction of a gas pipeline over a year ago, which, once completed, could handle a daily flow of 20 million cubic feet of gas from Bolivia to Argentina. But the construction of the pipeline was suspended in March due to the political crisis in Bolivia.

Source: Xinhua