*** Interviews in English and Spanish, B-roll and photos of contamination available on request ***
When: April 30, 2008, 12:30 pm
Where: Occidental Petroleum Headquarters, 10889 Wilshire Blvd, LA 90024 (at Westwood Blvd)
Los Angeles, CA – Indigenous leaders joined by scores of environmental and business leaders, and celebrities including Daryl Hannah will don hazmat suits and stage a “clean up operation” outside the headquarters of Occidental Petroleum, demanding that the company clean up the massive environmental contamination it left behind in the Peruvian Amazon.
Oxy dumped nine billion barrels of toxic wastewater into virgin tropical rainforest belonging to the indigenous Achuar people when it drilled for oil there from 1971 to 2000. The company then fled the country, leaving local communities to suffer a public health crisis in a devastated environment.
Now leaders of the Achuar people have come to Los Angeles, the oil major’s hometown, to call on the company to clean up the toxic mess it left in the oil concession known as “block 1ABâ€, allowing their communities to recover from the lead and cadmium poisoning and other ills from which they are suffering.
“The amount of toxic pollution left by Oxy in Peru is beyond belief,” said Amazon Watch Executive Director Atossa Soltani. “Oxy knowingly poisoned the rainforest homeland of the Achuar people and have refused to clean up their toxic contamination. It appears we now need to resort to public demonstrations, lawsuits and media campaigns to get Oxy to do the right thing. We would like Oxy CEO Ray Irani to look out of his office window on Wednesday and hear our message: Oxy must take responsibility for cleaning up the Amazon before more innocent people suffer.”
The event comes two days before Oxy’s annual general meeting for shareholders on Friday, May 2nd, which Achuar leaders and environmental campaigners will attend as proxy voters. The Achuar are expected to address the meeting, telling Oxy executives, directors and shareholders directly about their plight and demanding that Oxy fund a full environmental remediation, and provide healthcare to the Achuar.
The Achuar are also pursuing legal redress against Oxy. A Los Angeles superior court judge recently ruled that a class-action lawsuit filed by the Achuar and Amazon Watch belonged in Peruvian rather than U.S. jurisdiction. The plaintiff’s lawyers are now considering whether to appeal that decision or whether to launch a new lawsuit in Peru. “Whether it is here in Los Angeles or back in Peru, we will get justice. Oxy will clean up,” said Henderson Rengifo, an Achuar leader who has traveled to LA this week.
According to a report published last year by EarthRights International (ERI), Peruvian group Racimos de Ungurahui, and Amazon Watch, Oxy flouted Peruvian law and international human rights norms in block 1AB. The report, titled Legacy of Harm, found:
* For thirty years, Oxy dumped an average of 850,000 barrels per day of toxic oil by-products directly into rivers and streams used by the Achuar for drinking, bathing and fishing;
* Oxy dumped drilling fluids, crude oil and wastewater laden with heavy metals and carcinogens into unlined earthen pits, prohibited by U.S. standards;
* Oxy violated international rights norms, including the right to life, the right to health, the right to a healthy environment, and indigenous people’s rights, as stipulated in the American Convention on Human Rights and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights;
* Oxy violated Peru’s General Water Law and General Health Law, as well as environmental statutes regulating the hydrocarbon sector.
In the U.S. and other industrialized countries, the standard industry procedure for more than half-a-century has been to re-inject all formation waters deep back into the ground precisely to prevent the kind of environmental and public health crisis currently taking place among the Achuar communities. Oil companies operating in the Amazon and other areas of developing nations have, however, often chosen to save money by dumping the formation waters in the local environment.
Oxy eventually handed its facilities to Pluspetrol, which continued to operate in the same substandard manner. After intense pressure from the Achuar people and their international supporters, Pluspetrol agreed in 2006 to upgrade its technology and begin re-injecting the toxic wastewater back into the ground and to clean up any contamination caused by the company.
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Also on Friday May 2, Press Briefing and Rally at Oxy’s Annual shareholders meeting with Achuar leaders and celebrities including Daryl Hannah outside the Fairmont Miramar Hotel, 101 Wilshire Blvd (corner of Ocean Ave), Santa Monica CA 90401. Rally begins 9.30am and media briefing at 9.45am, Occidental Petroleum annual general meeting inside hotel at 10.30am.
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