Colombia Oil Site Ruled 'Off-Limits' to Oxy | Amazon Watch
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Colombia Oil Site Ruled ‘Off-Limits’ to Oxy

March 31, 2000 | Yahoo

A Colombian court has ordered Occidental Petroleum Corp (NYSE:OXY – news) to halt all work on a promising oil site that the country’s native U’wa tribe claims as part of their ancestral lands, authorities said Friday.

Alberto Calderon, president of state oil company Ecopetrol, said the court injunction was handed down Thursday and would effectively block, if upheld on appeal, what he described as “the most important oil prospect this country has.”

“The project has been paralyzed,” Calderon told a news conference.

He was referring to the so-called Samore block in a guerrilla-dominated area of northeast Colombia, which is believed to harbor up to 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil.

The site could help ensure much-needed petro-dollars and energy self-sufficency for Colombia, which could become a net importer of crude by 2005 if no major new finds are made to lift proven reserves from current levels of about 2.4 billion barrels.

But Calderon said a Bogota judge supported the U’wa tribe’s claim that Samore – while located just outside their official reservation – is part and parcel of the ancestral lands of their forefathers.

He said the judge ruled that drilling on the site would violate “fundamental rights” of the U’wa people, including their right to life.

The U’wa grabbed the media spotlight for the first time about five years ago, when they first vowed to commit mass suicide if their land was “violated” by Occidental or any other oil company.

“What’s at stake here is 40 million inhabitants,” Calderon said, adding that the government would appeal the ruling next week on grounds that it favored the U’wa, who number no more than about 7,000, over the general population of Colombia.

Occidental has seen its exploration of the Samore block delayed since 1992 because of the land dispute with the U’wa.

The U.S. multinational finally won government permission to develop Samore late last year. But U’wa protesters have surrounded the first test drill site, on the edge of Samore and dubbed Gilbraltar-1, since November to prevent the drilling for oil which they believe to be the “life blood of Mother Earth.”

The protesters reported that three U’wa children drowned last month, after security forces moved to disperse them and forced the infants’ mothers to jump into a fast-moving, rain-swollen river.

Police and the military officials disputed that account, however, calling it “propaganda” aimed at calling attention to the Indian group’s politically-charged standoff with Occidental.

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