Peru’s ministry of mines and energy has invited international NGOs to come to Peru and see the environmental monitoring of the Camisea natural gas project at first hand, the ministry said in a statement.
Peru’s government and the Camisea consortium, led by Argentina’s Pluspetrol, are currently lobbying the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Exim Bank for US$500mn in loans needed to complete the pipeline.
But concerns about the project’s impact on the region’s biodiversity and indigenous peoples are threatening to derail the loans and delay the project, which is scheduled to start operations in mid-2004.
“This sets a very bad precedent for Peru to allow this kind of development in protected areas set aside for indigenous peoples,” Atossa Soltani, executive director of environmental NGO Amazon Watch told BNamericas.
Peru’s energy regulator Osinerg recently fined the downstream TGP pipeline consortium US$1mn for environmental infractions, which included building an access road without an EIS, clearing forest land in a nature reserve without permission, and excessive route clearing around the pipeline, causing erosion.
But Peru’s energy minister Jaime Quijandria said that the damage is completely “repairable,” and that the Osinerg fine is a sign that Peru has an effective monitoring program in place.
But NGOs such as Amazon Watch remain to be convinced. “We have already been down to Peru several times and we have hours of video footage and photographs showing the devastation,” Soltani said.
“We question whether the Peruvian government has the effective capacity to regulate a project of this scale,” Atossa added.
