Peru: Is This an Oil War?

In scenes reminiscent of the American frontier during the C19, this week has seen a state of emergency declared and the Peruvian Army ordered into the country's Amazon region to help the police put down a protest by indigenous tribal groups against the granting of oil drilling permits to multi-national companies.

As previously reported on this blog, Anglo-French group Perenco is sending about 1,000 workers into the Peruvian Amazon to drill in lands which contain significant numbers of native Amazonian tribes, including several that have had no contact with outside cultures and are therefore particularly susceptible to imported disease. Canadian petrochemical firm Petrolifera are also active in the region in the Ucayali Basin, and control about 4.5 million acres in Peru.

Perenco's operations are in the Maranon Basin near the boarder with Equador in an area that it claims holds over 300 millions barrels of oil which it hopes to extract at the rate of 100,000 barrels per day. Perenco secured the drilling rights after Perenco President Francois Perrodo met with Peruvian President Alan Garcia Perez and pledged to invest $US 2 billion into energy-related development in the area. Perenco plans on drilling over 100 wells, building local pipelines and central processing facilities in the area, which is home to the Cacataibos, Isconahua, Matsigenka, Mashco-Piro, Mastanahua, Murunahua and Nant tribes.

American energy company ConocoPhillips owns a concession of over 10 million acres in the Peruvian Amazon and has been criticised by NGO Amazon Watch for the risk their operation poses to indigenous people groups who have chosen a policy of non-contact in order to preserve their traditional culture and to protect themselves from disease.

Directives by the Government of Peru passed over the last two years have relaxed restrictions on oil exploration in the Amazon and up to 30,000 people have been holding a month long protest to call for the repeal of these decrees. There have also been blockades of key rivers and roads into the affected areas, as illustrated in the video below.

A British friend and long-time resident in Peru recently told me that the public money pledged to educational and health care improvement among the Amazonian tribes rarely reaches its intended recipients and that corruption in all levels of government is known to be widespread.

Peru Indigenous Mobilization from Amazon Watch on Vimeo.

Up to date news and fuller details about organised campaigns to stop oil and gas exploration in the Peruvian Amazon can be found here.

Possible actions concerned citizens could take include:

• writing to the President of Peru
• contacting your congressman or woman
  
• writing or emailing your local MP or MEP
• contacting your local Peruvian embassy

Alternatively, concerned citizens could always write or pay a visit to the oil company of their choice and have a chat with the managers there about how you feel their company is behaving in northern Peru. Contact details are as follows:


Perenco

Thames House
Thamesfield Way
off Pasteur Road
Great Yarmouth
Norfolk
NR31 0DN

Tel: +44 1 493 414 000
Fax: +44 1 493 414 001

Petrolifera

Suite 900
332 Sixth Avenue SW
Calgary
Alberta
Canada
T2P 0B9

Fax: 403.538.6225


R. A. Gusella
Executive Chairman
(403) 538-6201

or

Gary D. Wine
President and Chief Operating Officer
(403) 539-8450

or

Kristen J. Bibby
Vice President Finance and Chief Financial Officer
(403) 539-8450

ConocoPhillips

Meet the Leadership Team or The Board of Directors and then pay them a visit at

600 North Dairy
Ashford

Houston,

TX 77252-2197

Phone: 281 293 1000

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Heathrow, Human Rights and Peru

Opposition to the third runway at Heathrow is not merely about local traffic and noise pollution or even the flattening of the nearby village of Sipson to make way for the planned expansion.

More fundamental than this is the fact that our culture's "addiction to oil" (President Bush's words, not mine) is being met at an increasing cost not only to the physical environment but also to some of the planet's most vulnerable tribal peoples.

Latest to face the risk of the world's expanding thirst for oil are previously un-contacted tribes living in the remote Peruvian Amazon. Anglo-French oil company Perenco have recently been granted permission by the Peruvian government to drill for oil in the region.

Peru’s national indigenous organization, AIDESEP, is opposed to Perenco’s plans as is Survival International who have several videos on the issue on their site. Perenco itself intends to send in over 1,000 workers to the region and to build 14 oil wells.

When Shell began oil extraction among the Yora people in South East Peru in the 1980s, approximately half of the tribal population died over the coming decade, often as a result of contracting diseases for which they had no immune system.

Perenco officially denies the existence of uncontacted tribes in the area, despite confirmation of their existence by the governments of Peru and Ecuador and by Barrett Resources who formerly carried out exploration work in the area. Survival names some of these groups as the Cacataibos, Isconahua, Matsigenka, Mashco-Piro, Mastanahua, Murunahua and Nanti.

Oil exploration is often a human rights issue and by advocating a way of life, personally and in terms of public policy, that actively moves away from carbon-dependency, we have more chance of reducing the demand for fresh oil exploration of the kind currently being carried out by Perenco.

Building a third runway at Heathrow because "If we don't, someone else will" is a dishonest approach when the need is for far more radical action that significantly reduces air travel globally.

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