Amazon tribes battle energy giants
chron.com
Native groups fear way of life in danger
By JUAN FORERO
New York Times
PUMPUENTSA, Ecuador -- As international energy companies move into the Amazon basin to tap some of the world's last untouched oil and natural gas reserves, more and more of the region's natives are spoiling for a fight, with Ecuador at the center of the battle.
Oil workers and contractors have been kidnapped, company officials say. Equipment has been vandalized. Protests, injunctions and lawsuits are piling up as Indian groups grow increasingly savvy in their cooperation with international activists and environmentalists, like Bianca Jagger, former wife of rock star Mick Jagger.
Governments in the region may increasingly regard the Amazon as an engine for economic growth, but native groups are struggling to balance development with the desire to preserve a nearly primordial way of life.
"Let the military come in, because we will defend to the last," said Medardo Santi, a leader of Kichwa Indians in an unspoiled jungle region that has been mapped for oil exploration in Ecuador, where the dispute is most contentious. "As long as we live here, we will defend our rights."
How this struggle plays out will determine whether Amazon resources become a critical part of Latin America's development and an important component of the Bush administration's strategy to diversify energy supplies beyond the Middle East.
Latin America already provides more oil to the United States than the Middle East. Plans for new oil and gas fields -- some deep in the jungle and others along the Andean foothills -- are speeding ahead, pushed by companies from as far afield as China. The biggest names include Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles, Repsol-YPF of Spain, Encana of Canada and Petrobras of Brazil.
Governments, meanwhile, are increasingly trying to lure investors and identify potential reserves, with maps showing potential oil and gas reserves along 1,000 miles of forests and Andean foothills from Colombia to Bolivia.
But in no country is Amazon oil exploration as potentially lucrative as in Ecuador, a country the size of Nevada that has, for better or worse, hitched the fortunes of its 13 million people to oil.
The country's 4.6 billion barrels of proven reserves are among the largest in Latin America. Oil already accounts for nearly half of exports. With the recent completion of a $1.3 billion, 300-mile pipeline by a consortium of foreign oil companies, the government deepened its commitment eventually to doubling production to 850,000 barrels a day.
If development in the jungle moves unhindered, the Ecuadorean Amazon could yield as much as 26 billion barrels in reserves, enough crude to rival oil powers like Mexico and Nigeria, according to a hopeful 1999 study by Ecuador's Ministry of Energy and Mines.
"This basin has a lot of opportunities; it's viewed as a very rich basin, if we can get there and work it," said one foreign oil executive, who asked to remain unidentified for fear of igniting controversy. "That's why we are hanging on."
So far, oil executives and industry analysts say, threats from native groups are still less likely to drive off investors than the government's own tax hikes and altering of agreements. But for oil companies, dealing with native groups has proved arduous.
Some companies have tried to placate tribes with everything from chain saws to outboard motors. Others focus on building schools and clinics, paying for teachers and personnel. They have employed experienced anthropologists to help cut deals.
"When we did our seismic testing, we suffered kidnappings, fires and robberies," said Ricardo Nicolas, general manager here of Compania General de Combustibles, an Argentine company that has the contract to develop fields north of Pumpuentsa. "It's been seven years, and we haven't been able to get started -- seven years and $10 million."
Faced with growing opposition, the government said it was prepared to provide military protection so oil companies in southeastern Ecuador can complete the seismic tests needed before exploration begins.
"The petroleum does not belong to them," Carlos Arboleda, Ecuador's minister of energy and mines, said of the native groups. "The oil belongs to the state."
Indigenous leaders disagree. Even though Ecuador's constitution does not give native groups the underground rights to oil and gas, the reality is that unless a company obtains their consent, exploration is difficult, if not impossible.
"We are the owners of the jungle," said Antonio Wasump Samaraint, 68, a wrinkled, knob-kneed elder who wore the red-and-yellow feathered headband and face paint of his people, the Achuar. "We have always rejected the petroleum companies. We do not accept them."
Much of the riches, said Arboleda, the energy minister, will come from drilling in jungle regions -- like the Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini fields in the far east -- that are among the most isolated and ecologically sensitive.
The government claims these areas contain as much as 2 billion barrels in heavy oil, which could one day mean 200,000 barrels a day of production. "The future is in the exploitation of all those areas," Arboleda said.
That future will be increasingly uncertain and conflict-ridden, many oil company executives concede, without some compromise and real compensation for the native groups that live there.
*These tribes may have weapons of mass destruction? |
