The Peru Amazon indigenous oil situation: a primer

I haven't posted on this story much, but now that it's becoming big it's high time I got my finger out and said at least something.

The basic story is:

• The Peru government sells Amazon basin exploration lots to international oil companies (Petrobras, Repsol, Talisman, Perenco, Petrolifera)

• Indigenous locals are not consulted on the sale or the presence of foreign oil companies on what they consider ancestral land.

• Peru government ignores the locals

• Locals demand their legal right to consultations on the development and the right of veto on the projects as per Peruvian law

• Peru gov't ignores locals, announces to the world development for $1bn with this company, $2bn for that company etc

• Locals protest, organize marches, petitions etc

• Peru gov't ignores locals, but wiser oil companies such as Petrolifera defer spudding timescales (from mid 2008 to "some time in 2010") in order not to upset local populations

• Local protests become more militant, block transport routes (typically rivers and waterways in the region), take over local plants etc

• Peru gov't declares a 60 day state of emergency, calls in the army, states that all laws and rights are suspended

• Gov't and locals sit down to negotiate

• Gov't says "stop protesting or we'll crush you"

• Locals give gov't the seriously large finger.

There's lots more to it, of course (for example the threat to supposedly protected indigenous communities that are watching their right to isolation get trampled upon), but that's where we are today, people. Here's a BBC World report that has the latest from a region that will never (and I repeat never) allow oil companies to operate. The combo of massive rejection of the oil business and the extreme isolation of the region makes it almost impossible for companies to operate successfully over a longer time period. The thing is that the oil companies have gone into these deals mainly in good faith; they've been promised that "the locals will behave" by Twobreakfasts and now the fat arrogant bastard is losing face with the international business community. This does not bode well for the safety of the locals when Alan sends the army in, sad to say.

Perenco's idea of community relations: Shoot the locals

In Peru there are two conflicting issues in its oil industry. One you get to hear about quite a lot, the other doesn't tend to get much press coverage:

1) Peru is about to auction a new batch of lots for oil and gas exploration in its Amazon Basin region in July and has recently agreed to deals worth $650m via PetroPeru (yep, the same oil company in the centre of all those corruption scandals just a few months ago) with international oil companies.

2) Locals in and around the regions being sold off and/or currently being explored are on the tenth day of a general strike against the oil companies. They complain of non-cooperation from the oil companies, broken promises of investments in the local regions, pollution of the rivers and waterways killing fish and animals and the forcing upon them of new laws that will strip them of the rights currently held to decide whether the oil companies can operate in their ancestral homes. A specific complaint is how oil companies refuse to engage in the legally required consultation meetings with locals and, even when they do turn up to the meetings, refuse to listen to the other point of view and simply say "we're going to do this, this and this, like it or not."

All this background explains, in a more or less way, why the local Amazin basin peoples have called their general strike. As part of that strike they have bloked several main trunk route waterways to stop the oil companeis from operating. So two days ago, the French Perenco Oil & Gas company (people with a bad rep for pollution in Ecuador, it should be noted) took it upon themselves to break their boat through the barriers set up. When local approached the boat in question they were shot at by the people on board, according to this report. Beats talking to them every time, no?

Yet another lesson in winning friends and influencing people, neoliberal style. I find it jawdropping to think of a mindset that believes you can trample all over these people and then expect to have an operating oil well further down the track. If there is one place in the world where you need to keep the locals on your side, it's the Amazon Basin. Watch Joffé's 1986 movie The Mission for insight.