The leader of a tribe in Ecuador traveled from the Amazon rainforest to Texas for a shareholders’ meeting at a major oil and gas exploration company in order to express his people’s opposition to an oil drilling project in the
environmentally threatened region.
Pablo Tsere, chief of the 80,000-member Shuar tribe of southeastern Ecuador, urged executives of Houston-based Burlington Resources on Wednesday to stop drilling on two pieces of land where Burlington and Argentina’s Compania
General de Combustibles plan to drill for oil.
“We Shuar are an ancient people who continue to live in our territory according to our customs,” Tsere, who wore a traditional headdress made of toucan feathers, said in Spanish. Shannon Wright, executive director of Amazon
Watch, a nonprofit group supporting the Shuar and two other indigenous groups in their campaign against Burlington and CGC, acted as his interpreter.
Tsere, 37, held the proxy for some Burlington shares. Burlington officials met with Tsere and Amazon Watch leaders after the shareholders’ meeting in an informal closed-door session. Executives said they would drill only after they had the consent of the majority of the people in the area.
Burlington spokesman James Bartlett said the company’s representatives in Ecuador have met with the elected leaders of 55 communities in the area known as
block 24.
“We believe the vast majority support responsible development,” Bartlett told the Houston Chronicle for Thursday’s editions. “We’re not going to enter the
block by force.”
Amazon Watch leaders accuse Ecuador’s military and CGC of the torture and kidnap of indigenous people.
Burlington, which has owned drilling rights in that block for about five years, also holds a 50 percent interest in the area known as block 23. CGC controls the other half of that block and operates it. Burlington has not done
much work in the block it operates, but CGC tried to conduct environmental impact and seismic studies in its area beginning in 1997, said Ricardo Nicols, CGC’s manager in Ecuador.
Before CGC workers could estimate the area’s potential for oil and begin drilling, violence erupted between the military and the indigenous people. CGC officials have accused another group of indigenous people living in the area of kidnapping workers and stealing explosives; they say they have pulled their workers from the area.
Tsere told reporters on Tuesday his people also are prepared to fight to keep Burlington workers out.
“If it comes to the last resort, we will defend our territory,” said Tsere, whose term as Shuar chief ends in 10 months when he has to hand the headdress over to the next chief.
The Shuar consider the headdress a crown that holds power.
