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OXY's Legacy: Caño Limón Oil Spills To The Santo Domingo Massacre
Occidental Petroleum's existing Caño Limón pipeline is a telling tale of the human and environmental disaster that goes hand in hand with oil development in Colombia. Since the pipeline's construction in 1986, it has been attacked over 1000 times by guerrilla groups, spilling more than 2.9 million barrels of crude oil into the forest and rivers. Theses oil spills amount to eleven times the crude spilled by the Exxon Valdez. The Colombian Environmental Ministry estimates that at nearly 1,625 miles of river have been polluted by these spills.
Research shows that oil revenues from OXY's pipeline end up financing all sides of Colombia's civil war. To protect its operations, OXY relies heavily on the Colombian military; a notorious human rights violator with the worst record in the western hemisphere. According to Oil and Gas Journal, OXY paid $20 million for security in 1997, not including a dollar per barrel "war tax" levied by the Colombian government for military protection (costing the company roughly $180,000 per day). Even so, due to damage inflicted by guerrilla bombings, in 2001, Caño Limón pipeline remained inoperable for 266 days.
---- OXY founder Armand Hammer in a 1995 interview
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In 2000, OXY's Vice President Lawrence Meriage testified in the U.S. Congress that OXY is regularly shaken down" by both FARC and ELN guerrillas and "required to pay a 'war tax' to both groups or they will not be able to work."
In June of 2001, new evidence surfaced in a Colombian legal proceeding that exposed how OXY's insidious relationship with the Colombian military turned fatal. An investigation led by Colombia's Attorney General into the Santo Domingo massacre of 1998 called for the subpoena of three American pilots employed by AirScan for the alleged bombing of civilians. AirScan is a private security firm contracted by OXY since 1997 to protect its oil operations.
At Santo Domingo, the mutual interests of the Colombian military and Occidental Petroleum led to one of the country's deadliest attacks on civilians. As widely reported by the Los Angeles Times, Colombian military officials testified that AirScan provided the Colombian military with key strategic information gathered during their security work for OXY and helped coordinate the air attack using infrared and video equipment to pinpoint targets on the ground. OXY's compound also served as the staging ground for the attack, where strategy meetings were held with the military and AirScan. Evidence is also emerging that AirScan provided the military with the flight crew for the military plane that dropped the cluster bomb on the town.
The military bombing operation "targeted" supposed guerrillas, but killed 17 civilians, six of them children. No rebels were identified.
Both OXY and AirScan now face a lawsuit in U.S. courts over their roles in the massacre. The case, brought forth by the International Labor Rights Fund and the Center for Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law, was filed April 24, 2003 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California under the Alien Tort Claims Act. A survivor of the massacre and key witness in the case stated, "As a family member of the victims, as a witness, and a survivor, I seek the truth, justice, and reparations for the damages that were caused to my family. You cannot imagine the pain that this incident has caused, the frightening remains of my loved ones burned, mutilated and almost impossible to recognize. I am here to ask you Occidental, why was your compound used to plan the bombing of my village? Please tell me, what was your role? Why was our village bombed? I believe I have the right to know exactly what happened."
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