Peru's rainforest: oil and gas run through it
Indigenous groups are threatened as Peru gears up for an energy boom.
from the May 7, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Segundo Pergara, an official for the Peruvian health ministry, says his agency is working to educate native populations about natural resource management and public health.
But both oil companies and their antagonists say the Peruvian government could do more to protect fragile cultures.
"The state has always been absent from the region," says Lelis Rivera, the executive director of the Center for the Development of Indigenous Amazonia (CEDIA). Mr. Riveras says his group helps natives "prepare to deal with people who come to trample on the rights."
Though communities have the right by Peruvian law to be consulted, and oil negotiators seek "social licenses" with them, they are powerless to stop companies carrying government concessions, he says.
"When no agreement exists between the communities and the companies," he says, "the state in the end guarantees that it will deliver the resource for the company."
With few legal options, native supporters are turning up public pressure on companies they say threaten the environment and fail to properly consult with native inhabitants.
Last week, Amazon Watch, a California-based conservation group, and Earth Rights International released a report accusing US-based Occidental Petroleum of polluting native communities in northern Peru by ignoring industry standards and following out-of-date practices in oil operations, a claim the company denies.
In southeastern Peru activists are fighting Camisea, a $1.6 billion natural-gas project backed partly by Hunt Oil, a Texas oil company, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
Camisea has generated some $700 million in government royalties in three years but has also suffered a series of contaminating pipeline spills and is accused by natives of ruining fishing holes and hunting grounds.
Backers say the problems are fixed. But antagonists like E-Tech, a California non-profit engineering firm, disagree and want the IDB and other potential funders to deny loan requests for Camisea II, a piggyback project to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the US by 2010.
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