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Peru's Northern Amazon: Blighted By The Toxic Legacy of Oil 35 years of oil production in Block 1AB in the northern Amazon has left indigenous peoples, who have lived in the area since time immemorial, suffering malnutrition, sickness and social disruption. Since 1971, Los-Angles-based Occidental Petroleum, using practices outlawed in the U.S., pumped an average of 800,000 gallons a day of salty formation water and other toxic wastewaters into local rivers with appalling consequences for local communities.
Acute Health Problems in Indigenous Communities The Achuar, Aguaruna, Urarina, Candoshi and other indigenous peoples of the region depend on clean forest and river resources for subsistence. However, as various studies over the last two decades have shown, the rivers on which they depend contain high levels of salt and oil, critical concentrations of chloride, and high electrical conductivity, particularly the Corrientes, Tigre and Piedra Negra Rivers.
Many communities have no springs or alternatives sources of water and are forced to drink polluted river water. Heavy metals and organic compounds have accumulated in the aquatic food chain causing acute health problems in local communities, resulting in many deaths. In the indigenous community of Pucacacuro, a leader stated:
"We no longer have any places to fish, We stopped fishing in our lake, because once when we ate fish from the lake, everyone got sick with nausea, diarrhea and other, incurable diseases. Five men died."
No Benefit for Local Peoples From Oil Bonanza Blocks 8 and 8X located alongside Block 1AB were ran by the Peruvian state oil company Petroperu with similar disastrous social and economic consequences. These blocks are heralded by the oil industry as the most lucrative in Peru because they generate 65% of domestic oil consumption.
Yet despite the fortune made from oil, state provision of basic services is limited or non-existent in this area. The Peruvian state has given little thought to the indigenous communities who bear the real burden of national oil consumption.
Toxic Legacy Lives On Through Pluspetrol Occidental and Petroperu's damaging environmental practices were largely replicated by the Argentine energy company Pluspetrol - a company with a very poor environmental track record - when it took over Block 1AB in 2000 and Blocks 8 and 8X in 1996. Peruvian indigenous advocacy NGO Racimos de Ungurahui and other groups are now supporting affected communities in denouncing Pluspetrol and demanding environmental clean-up and reparations.
Now Pluspetrol is moving ahead with plans for new 110 km pipeline to Block 1AB from Block 8, which will cut through indigenous lands causing further social disturbance. Local peoples oppose the new $20 million pipeline fearing the impacts of an increase in oil production.
However, Pluspetrol, also a lead company in Peru's Camisea Gas Project in the south-east Amazon, is pushing ahead with the pipeline which purportedly will increase national oil output by 12,000 barrels/day or 13% and net the company an annual profit of more than $100 million. Yet, though eager to pocket growing profits, Pluspetrol steadfastly refuses to compensate local communities or to recognize its responsibility for continuing the toxic legacy of its predecessors.
Sources Sources
Lily La Torre Lopez. All we want is to live in peace. IWGIA. 1999.
Diario Gestión, June 2, 2001
Diario Gestión, Abril 30, 2001
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