More About Block 1AB

My First Decade at Amazon Watch

Over ten years, I have been privileged to play a role in most of the organization's major campaign initiatives. While the moments of exhilaration, frustration, learning, anger, and beauty could fill a book, I want to share ten snapshots of key experiences that represent what serving with Amazon Watch has meant to me.

It Could Cost $1 Billion To Clean Up the Oil in Peru’s Northern Amazon

Over four decades of exploration and extraction have caused an environmental and health crisis in Indigenous communities

Who is going to clean up Peru's northern Amazon after decades of companies spilling oil and dumping billions of barrels of toxic production waters? Certainly not US company Occidental which ran the biggest concession, Lot 1-AB, until 2000, nor, it would seem, Petroperu, which ran the other major concession, Lot 8, until 1996 and operates the rusty, leaking North Peruvian Pipeline to this day.

Block 192: Government in Disarray; Indigenous Indignant

Peru's government and its Congress appear to be at loggerheads over control of Block 192, the country's main onshore source of crude. Indigenous peoples of the north-eastern jungle are indignant at the government turning its back on dialogue about the future of Block 192. The issue throws into question the government's whole approach to prior consultation.

Asserting Indigenous Rights in Peru's Plagued & Prolific Block 192

"I've seen a publicity campaign saying that Pluspetrol is working hand-in-hand with the communities, that they protect the environment, our health, our children. It makes me ashamed for them to see this advertising they aren't living up to. They don't care. What's more, they won't admit all the bad things they have done. The people who don't live here might believe the campaign, but the people from the communities don't believe it because they live here."

Scientists Must Let World's Most Isolated Tribes Make Own Decisions

Initiating “controlled contact” with Indigenous peoples in the Amazon would violate their rights and threaten their lives

Usually the Indigenous peoples living in the remotest Amazon only draw international media attention if certain kinds of photos or film footage emerge, as in mid-2014, or they raid a village or, tragically, kill someone, as happened on 1 May. Many media reports misinform as much as inform: factual errors, no context and all kinds of sensationalism. 'Lost tribe!' 'First contact!'

Tensions Run High As Consultation Process for Peru's Biggest Oil Block Finally Begins

The last few days have seen the start of a process to decide the future of a territory that has been subjected to oil exploration for the last 40+ years – namely, oil block 192 (formally called 1AB) that spans three river basins (Tigre, Corrientes, Pastaza) and is home to over 100 Indigenous communities.

Indigenous Peruvians Win Amazon Pollution Payout from US Oil Giant

Out-of-court settlement ends long legal battle for compensation for deaths, birth defects and environmental damage allegedly caused by Occidental's pollution

Members of the Indigenous Achuar tribe from the Peruvian Amazon have won an undisclosed sum from Occidental Petroleum in an out-of-court settlement after a long-running legal battle in the US courts.

Indigenous Groups Occupy Airport Near Amazon Oil Reserves

'Without a satisfactory response to the interests of the Amazon Indians, the measures [of force] will get more radical,' community leader Hugo Perez Petza said

A large group of Indigenous Peruvian community members took control of an airport in the Andoas region of the Amazon on Monday to protest Argentine energy company Pluspetrol, which they say is polluting the land and exploiting resources in the region to build their oil drilling operations.