Bogota – A U.S. oil firm is due to drill a controversial test well in September in a disputed corner of northeast Colombia where U’wa Indians have even threatened to commit mass suicide to defend what they claim as ancestral land rights, the country’s oil association chief said on Friday.
Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp (NYSE:OXY – news) had been due to sink the Gibraltar-1 well, at an estimated cost of $40 million, in the first half of this year in the so-called Samore block just outside the government-mandated limits of the U’wa reservation.
The block has been hailed as the country’s biggest oil prospect, with potential crude reserves of between 2 billion and 2.5 billion barrels. If test drills are successful the field could ensure supplies of oil, Colombia’s top export earner, well into the next decade.
Leaders of the 7,000-member U’wa community have so far blocked drilling efforts with legal action and other protests, insisting the well site encroached on much wider ancestral lands that belonged to their semi-nomadic forebears.
But in Bogota, Alejandro Martinez, the head of the Colombian Oil Association which represents private sector oil firms, said: “They (Occidental) are completing civil engineering works in order to begin drilling in Samore in September. There were a couple of incidents, they should have begun in June but it was delayed to September.”
An Occidental spokesman at the company’s Los Angeles headquarters said he had no comment on when the company would begin drilling the well.
“There are some serious issues with security,” he said. “We wouldn’t be commenting publicly to give any advance notice when we’re going to do work. It exposes peoples lives to danger.”
Occidental chiefs were not immediately available for comment in Colombia.
INDIANS THREATEN MASS SUICIDE TO PREVENT OIL DRILLING
In the past, the U’was have threatened to commit mass suicide to defend their land and protect the oil which they view as the “lifeblood of Mother Earth”.
Marxist guerrillas that operate in the region and are opposed to foreign multinational involvement in the oil industry have also attacked construction and engineering equipment causing further setbacks.
The U’was have received strong backing in their fight against Occidental from U.S.-based environmental groups.
Last year, three U.S. citizens working with the U’was in northeast Colombia were kidnapped and murdered by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels and their bodies dumped across the border with neighbouring Venezuela.
The land dispute first flared in 1992 when Occidental was granted exploration rights to the 500,000 acre (200,000 hectare) block. Last year, the government increased the size of the U’wa reservation in a failed bid to resolve the wrangle.
Colombia currently produces an average 710,000 barrels per day of crude and exported some $2.2 billion of oil in the first half of this year.
But proven reserves, which now stand at 2.3 billion barrels, are dwindling and could force the country to become a net oil importer again by 2005 if no major new finds are made.
