Tribe's protest forces oil giant to cave in

Dan Collyns, Iquitos, Peru, November 26, 2006

An Achuar tribesman ... victory over the oil giant after a blockade of Peru's largest oil facility.

By any measure it was a remarkable protest. More than 800 Achuar tribespeople from the borders of Peru and Ecuador, headed by their leaders with their red and yellow feathered headdresses, arrived last month by the boatload in the twilight hours at four oil wells in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.

Their faces streaked with paint and with people carrying hunting shotguns and ceremonial spears, they formed a peaceful blockade of Peru's largest oil plant. They stayed for nearly two weeks, shutting down power to most of the region's oil production, and its road, airport and river access.

It was a desperate attempt by the Achuar to get the Peruvian Government to take notice of their plight. For decades they had been saying that their land had been heavily polluted and their waters poisoned by oil exploration, but they had been consistently ignored.

The ploy worked. The loss of millions of dollars in revenue and about 40,000 barrels of oil per day forced the government and Pluspetrol — Peru's largest oil and gas operator — to concede to most of the Achuar's demands, including re-injecting all the contaminated waste water back into the ground within two years, and building a new hospital with enough money to run a health service for 10 years.

The victory was particularly sweet for the Achuar — who number about 8000 in Peru's vast Amazon region of Loreto — because it was the only time in 36 years of oil exploration and extraction in their area that the state had intervened. Companies have long been given a free rein to flout international environmental laws.

For the Achuar, water is the source of life, but it has become the bringer of death. It has been contaminated with heavy metals through the production waters of oil drilling that are spewed out untreated into the rivers and streams without regard for international standards.

It wasn't until May this year that the Achuar's complaints of contamination were officially vindicated when Peru's health ministry found high concentrations of lead and cadmium in the blood samples of more than 200 of them.

Pluspetrol maintains that levels of the heavy metals in its production waters do not exceed permitted limits.

On the banks of the Corrientes river, the village of San Cristobal exists side-by-side with the Pluspetrol's Block 8, the second-largest oil plant in the country. The community's leader, Chief Alfonso Hualinga Sandy, says animals he used to hunt have been driven away by the pollution, fish are scarce, and the medicinal plants he once gathered are dying.

The Achuar use the river water to bathe in, to wash their clothes, and they mix it with the fermented mash of cassava to make their traditional drink, masato.

Latin America is a major source of oil, not only for the US, but for the world's second largest consumer, China. Peru has already signed away an estimated 43 per cent of its tropical rainforest to oil concessions — around 27 million hectares — in the past five years.
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More:
WWF helps Peruvian indigenous community stop wetland pollution
22 Oct 2006

Lima, Peru – An agreement between the government of Peru, the Achuar indigenous people and Argentinean oil company Pluspetrol will see contaminated wetlands in the Amazon cleaned up after decades of pollution.

According to the agreement, all production waters generated during petroleum extraction operations in the Abanico de Pastaza wetlands in northern Peru are to be re-injected into the subsoil by July 2008. In addition, a US$13 million integrated health fund is to be created by Pluspetrol for local indigenous groups that have been badly affected by 30 years of contamination. The oil company will also provide training to communities to monitor and guarantee a freshwater supply.

The agreement was pushed through by FECONACO (Organization of the Corrientes River Indigenous Community), with key support from indigenous rights NGO Racimos de Ungurahui, as well as WWF.

“This is a unique achievement,” said Fred Prins, WWF Peru’s Country Representative. “The agreement will allow the three parties to work together towards a solution to clean up the environment.”
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