Peru communities sue Occidental for oil operations - Reuters

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Peru communities sue Occidental for oil operations
10 May 2007 18:17:44 GMT
Source: Reuters

-snip-

By Bernie Woodall

LOS ANGELES, May 10 (Reuters) - Indigenous Peruvian Achuar communities
filed a class action suit against Occidental Petroleum Corp. <OXY.N> on
Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming oil production has damaged
their health and even killed a 6-year-old boy.

Occidental produced oil from 1975 to late 1999 in northeastern Peru near
Ecuador, where the Achuar have lived for centuries.

"In its unchecked effort to profit from Amazonian oil, Oxy engaged in
irresponsible, reckless, immoral and illegal practices in and around the
ancestral and current territory of the Achuar indigenous people," the
complaint said.

-snip-

Occidental officials are perplexed by the suit and "inflammatory misstatements"
made by three nonprofit groups supporting the Achuar, Occidental Vice President
for Communications Richard S. Kline told Reuters on Thursday.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10398150.htm

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Earlier E/E thread: Report: Occidental Petroleum Polluted Peruvian Amazon and Poisoned Indigenous Communities

[Peace Patriot]

1. Thanks for posting this! The Achuar are one amazing tribe! They've been

fighting Occidental Petroleum tooth and claw for years.

Here's AmazonWatch's rundown on the situation. Occy's Richard Kline has a lot of nerve talking about "inflammatory mistatements." What a bastard! "850,000 barrels per day of toxic oil byproducts" dumped into the rivers and streams that the Achuar use for fishing and drinking water!

http://www.amazonwatch.org/view_news.php?id=1375

"The approximately 12,500 Achuar who live in the northern Peruvian rainforest are some of the most traditional indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin. Their ancestral lands, which they have inhabited since before the arrival of Europeans, are one of the last refuges for countless species of flora and fauna found nowhere else on earth. To reach this region from the capital city of Lima can take up to a week by canoe and bus. Even travel on foot between villages can take days.

"In the early 1970s, petroleum was discovered in the Rio Corrientes river basin, the traditional territory of the Achuar, Quichua and Urarina indigenous peoples.

"Occidental Petroleum, the first foreign oil company to operate in Peru, was given the initial drilling concession (known as Block 1AB), which included over one million acres of pristine rainforest. For over 30 years, Oxy dumped an average of 850,000 barrels per day of toxic oil byproducts from the extraction process directly into rivers and streams used by local indigenous peoples for drinking, bathing, washing, and fishing – approximately 9 billion barrels in 30 years of operation.

"As a result of three decades of dumping, the Achuar have unsafe and illegal concentrations of a range of toxins in their bodies, including lead and cadmium. It has also poisoned local waterways to the point where the fish and game populations on which the Achuar depend for survival are no longer fit for human consumption.

"Despite Oxy’s announcement in December 2006 to withdraw all of its Peru operations, Achuar communities have been left with vast areas of the rainforest that require major remediation from 35 years of negligent oil extraction. On May 3, Earthrights International and Amazon Watch will be releasing the findings of an investigative mission to this region to document the social and environmental impacts of three decades of negligent Petroleum production activities on five indigenous Achuar communities. Oxy must take the lead and definitively tackle its historic legacy of toxic contamination.