Oil Contracts Signed Despite Peruvian Government’s Promises to Exclude Indigenous Peoples Reserves from Concessions Isolated Peoples’ Lives in Grave Danger, Indigenous Leader Warns World Bank, IDB and Ex-Im Bank Urged to Reject Loans to Hunt Oil | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Oil Contracts Signed Despite Peruvian Government’s Promises to Exclude Indigenous Peoples Reserves from Concessions Isolated Peoples’ Lives in Grave Danger, Indigenous Leader Warns World Bank, IDB and Ex-Im Bank Urged to Reject Loans to Hunt Oil

November 28, 2007 | For Immediate Release


Amazon Watch

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San Francisco, CA. – A wave of new oil concessions issued by the Peruvian government threatens the survival of some of the last indigenous communities still living in isolation anywhere in the Amazon, AIDESEP, the group representing Peru’s 350,000 indigenous rainforest people, has warned.

Last week, energy companies signed contracts with Peru’s Ministry of Energy and Mines for nine different oil concessions in the Peruvian Amazon, many of them intruding on the territories of isolated indigenous groups or overlapping official or proposed Indigenous Reserves.

The news comes as the U.S. Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) consider more than $1 billion in public financing to the controversial Camisea gas project, led by Texas-based Hunt Oil, in the southern Peruvian Amazon. Environmental and human rights groups warn that the mistakes of Camisea, including major social, cultural, and health impacts on local communities, and forced contact with isolated indigenous peoples are likely to be repeated in the new concessions.

“The lives of these peoples in voluntary isolation are in grave danger due to these contracts and, if the [Peruvian] state doesn’t meet its obligation to protect them, it will be condoning a new aggression against the fundamental rights of our isolated indigenous brothers,” said AIDESEP President Alberto Pizango Chota.

The new concessions include:
• Blocks 135 and 137, contracted to Canadian company Pacific Stratus, and which overlap the proposed Yavarí Tapiche Reserve, planned to protect the indigenous Nemöshbo, Kapanawa and Matses peoples and the Sierra del Divisor natural protected area;
• Block 138, also contracted to Pacific Stratus Energy, which intrudes onto the Isconahua Territorial Reserve, home to the nomadic Isconahua people;
• Block 142, contracted to Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, which intrudes onto the proposed Yavarí Mirim Indigenous Territorial Reserve, where an un-contacted ethnic group is known to live;
• Block 143, contracted by Texas-based Hunt Oil, and which intrudes onto the territories of the Achuar people, who are strongly opposed to any oil drilling.

The contract signings come despite previous agreements between the Peruvian state and AIDESEP. In February, the Peruvian government formally agreed that the state-owned oil-licensing agency Perupetro would redraw its proposed oil concessions to avoid official territorial reserves, AIDESEP said. In April, according to AIDESEP, Perupetro also agreed to inform bidders that the Peruvian state would create the “necessary mechanisms” to ensure that the winning companies would not intrude onto the proposed reserves, until Peru’s indigenous agency INDEPA had completed its evaluation.

Meawhile, in June, AIDESEP presented a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights requesting immediate protective measures for isolated peoples in the Kugapakori-Nahua Reserve, established to protect isolated indigenous groups and where three of the Camisea project’s drilling platforms are located.

The Ex-Im Bank is expected to announce its loan decision regarding Camisea in the first half of December. The announcement will follow a meeting in Lima earlier this month between Ex-Im directors, and environmental and human rights groups, including Amazon Watch, at which Camisea’s problematic social and environmental record was highlighted.

“We are very concerned about Ex-Im’s pending decision,” said Amazon Watch Executive Director Atossa Soltani. “During our meeting we explained why a loan to Camisea would be a misuse of U.S. tax dollars, and how nothing has changed since 2003, when Ex-Im previously rejected funding for Camisea. This project lacks transparency, meaningful environmental and social safeguards, and has led to the social and environmental devastation that we, among many others, predicted.”

Meanwhile, the IDB is expected to come in for heavy criticism at its semi-annual public consultation on Camisea in Lima taking place today. One likely issue at the hearing will be a recent audit, by consulting firm Germanischer Lloyd on behalf of the Peruvian government, which confirmed the project was improperly designed, and that the lacked of independent oversight was a major contributor to problems.

The IDB is expected to make its loan decision regarding Camisea in late December while the IFC will announce its decision, regarding a loan to expand the project, including the construction of a natural gas liquefaction terminal on Peru’s Pacific coast, in early January. One of the key points at issue for the World Bank will be whether it regards Camisea’s upstream component – drilling in the Peruvian Amazon in concessions known as blocks 88 and 56 – as an “associated facility” of the terminal. Under World Bank rules, loans are not permitted to projects whose “associated facilities” breach the Bank’s environmental and social safeguards.

For background information on Camisea, including how the project violates World Bank and IDB guidelines, see this in-depth report: http://www.amazonwatch.org/documents/camiseaII_sept2007_web.pdf

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