Lima, Peru – An Argentine-run oil company drilling in Peru’s northern jungle has agreed to stop dumping toxic waste into the rain forest by July 2008 following protests by an Indian organization that hailed the move Tuesday as a major victory.
Two weeks of protests by the Native Federation of the Corrientes River shut down jungle operations of Pluspetrol Norte, a subsidiary of Pluspetrol S.A., demanding a cleanup of pollution from three decades of oil drilling in the area.
Peru’s government and Pluspetrol signed an agreement with the group Monday to end the dumping of contaminated oil waste into the rain forest by the July 2008 deadline.
“This is an important achievement for the indigenous people, for the Achuar, because it is the first time the population protested like this, for 15 days, against the grave contamination,” said Petronila Chumpi, a spokeswoman for the Native Federation of the Corrientes River.
“Today the company is working normally again. The residents are back in their homes,” Chumpi told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from Iquitos, 625 miles northeast of Lima.
The dumping done by Pluspetrol is a practice long abandoned by oil companies elsewhere, environmentalists said. For more than half a century, the standard procedure in developed countries has been to “re-inject” toxic “formation water” _ a byproduct of oil drilling _ deep below the ground, California-based Amazon Watch said in a statement.
“The Achuar had to take high-stakes measures to force both Pluspetrol and the Peruvian state to end the archaic practice of dumping oil waste into the rain forest,” the statement said.
The watchdog group called the deal struck by the Achuar people “a historic indigenous triumph over the oil industry.”
Pluspetrol executives did not immediately respond to phone calls seeking comment.
Roberto Ramallo, the company’s local director, was quoted by CPN radio Tuesday saying Pluspetrol would “make its best effort” to abide by the agreement by the deadline, describing the task as “an extremely complex project.”
He said the company would ramp back up to its normal production levels in four or five days, CPN reported on its Web page.
President Alan Garcia’s Cabinet chief, Jorge Del Castillo, told foreign correspondents Tuesday that the Oct. 10 takeover of Pluspetrol’s oil wells was understandable.
Government health studies have found Achuar Indians in the zone suffer high blood concentrations of cadmium and lead _ a problem that Del Castillo said goes back to the 1970s when U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. operated in the area. Pluspetrol, Peru’s largest oil and gas producer, started operations in the area in the mid-1990s.
“There were generally bad conditions that turned into a pressure cooker ready to explode,” Del Castillo said.
“We have come up with an integral health plan in the zone, attending to each and every individual, men and women, adults and children,” Del Castillo said. “There will be a complementary nutrition program for them run by the state.”
The government also agreed to devote 5 percent of a regional oil tax to the affected area, authorities said.
