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ENERGY

Oil and Indigenous Communities


Sowing Discord in the Peruvian Amazon BY BARBARA FRASER

ON A DRIZZLY MORNING IN LATE FEBRUARY, A region, where there are virtually no wear. Only after a national television
boat full of silent Kukama men motored roads, a river is the lifeblood of the com- news magazine showed footage of the
slowly into the flooded forest off the munities along its banks. People drink scene did PetroPerú contract a com-
Marañón River in northern Peru. Cut- its water and bathe and wash clothes pany with experience in handling spills
ting the engine, one man began to row, and pots in it. The river is the only route and provide the workers with protective
maneuvering the boat past a partly sub- for traveling to nearby fishing grounds, gear. The state-run company also began
merged pile of rotting sacks of oily boots, neighboring communities or distant cit- to deliver bottled water, rice, canned
gloves and rags. As he glided into a back- ies. And it is the dwelling place of spirits, fish, sugar and cooking oil to families in
water, the oar stirred up an oily sheen ac- including those of relatives who drowned the village.
companied by the smell of gasoline. and whose bodies were never recovered. By October, nearly every adult male
Two days earlier, a delegation of gov- To pollute the river—created when sap in the village and many from sur-
ernment officials had visited the site and flowed from the mythical lupuna tree to rounding communities were working
declared it free of oil after a pipeline leak relieve a woman’s thirst—is also to con- for PetroPerú or its contractors. Some
in June 2014 had spilled between 1,600 taminate their spirit world. women dropped out of the work force,
and 2,000 barrels of crude into the rain In Cuninico and other Kukama com- feeling that they were neglecting house-
forest. Apparently they had not seen the munities, fish are a source of both pro- hold responsibilities. Cuninico was in
waste dump and the oil slick, and had tein and income. Before the oil spill, the the midst of a housing boom—virtu-
not noticed that the booms that had once network of lakes and channels up the ally everyone was rebuilding, roofing
formed a barrier across the pipeline canal Cuninico River from the village was a rich or expanding their homes. The excep-
were useless once the water rose and left fishing ground for people from about half tion was the coordinator of Cuninico’s
them floating in the forest. a dozen communities. As word spread Catholic community, who declined to
“They didn’t go to these places,” said about the spill, however, the market dried work for the company. His family’s home
one man, who had piloted one of the up. Not only did buyers shun fish from remained unchanged, with his son’s
boats ferrying members of the delegation Cuninico, but vendors who brought fish paintings of nature scenes still visible on
to the canal. “They didn’t look.” to sell in the community charged two or some of the walls.
The pipeline spill in Cuninico, a three times the usual market price. Water levels in the Marañón River
Kukama Indian village in the Peruvian With food and cash scarce, villag- and its tributaries rise and fall with
Amazon, was small by most standards. ers jumped at the chance to work as day the seasons, and company officials said
It is dwarfed by the Deepwater Horizon laborers for PetroPerú, first searching for they were working as quickly as pos-
spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the oil and the place where the pipe had ruptured, sible to finish the cleanup before flood-
wastewater dumped along the Corrien- then laboring on cleanup crews. The ing began toward the end of the year. In
tes, Pastaza and Tigre rivers to the north. wage of about $25 a day was three or four mid-December, they declared the work
For the villagers, however, it has been a times the usual day labor rate. Women finished and moved almost all their per-
lingering disaster. It also became a tem- cooked or washed clothing for the hun- sonnel out. The jobs and the money van-
porary employment opportunity, when dreds of cleanup workers, and several ished, but demand for fish from Cunini-
the state-run oil company, PetroPerú, families rented houses to the company co did not reappear. And when the high
hired local workers to clean up the oil and for lodging company managers. water brought ribbons of oil floating
contaminated soil and vegetation. But down the Cuninico River again, villag-
now, with the jobs and money gone, real- ECONOMICS AND ENVIRONMENT ers worried anew about whether it was
ity has settled in again, says Galo Flores, AT ODDS safe to eat the fish or drink or bathe in
the apu or president of Cuninico. The effort started badly—more than the water.
“The spill violated our rights,” Flores a dozen men worked for a week search- In an interview in March, company
says. “It has affected our entire life, but ing for the rupture, submerged to their officials admitted that they had been
especially the water, because we don’t chests in oily water around the pipeline unable to clean up part of the site—
have safe water to drink.” for hours at a time, clad only in regular where sacks of oily vegetation and bar-
In Peru’s northeastern Amazon clothes or stripped down to their under- rels filled with recovered oil had been

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FOCUS ON AMAZONS

Clockwise from top left: A boy washes his hands in water purified by a new water treatment plant in Dos de Mayo. A man tests the depth of
oily water after a pipeline break near the Kukama community of Cuninico, in the lower Marañón River valley in northern Peru. A woman washes
clothes near the mouth of the Cuninico River, traditionally her community’s source of water for drinking, cooking, washing and bathing.

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ENERGY

Dead fish and oily twigs gathered by villagers in Cuninico after an oil spill in June 2014.

stored, and where the boat oar had Occidental Petroleum and PetroPerú the Corrientes River inside Block 1AB
stirred up the oil slick—before it flooded, began operating in the northern Peru- reached a settlement with Occidental in
and said work would resume when the vian Amazon near the border with Ecua- September 2013, after nearly a decade of
river levels went down again. dor in the 1970s, in two leases—known as litigation in U.S. courts. The settlement,
Block 8 and Block 1AB—now operated by announced in Lima on March 5, 2015, a
LONG HISTORY OF CONFLICT Argentina-based Pluspetrol. During most year and a half after it was reached, pro-
The Cuninico villagers’ experience of that time, the hot, salty, metals-laden hibits the parties from revealing details of
with the oil spill resembles similar events water pumped out of the wells along with the agreement, but Achuar leaders said it
in other parts of the Amazon. The high- the oil was dumped into the Corrientes, includes a development fund of an undis-
est-profile case is that of Ecuador, with Pastaza, Tigre and Marañón rivers or closed amount, to be managed by the five
its prolonged and contentious legal battle streams that flow into those rivers. Lakes communities and used for projects such
over pollution from decades of poorly and soil were also polluted by oil spills, as as fish farms, health care and education.
regulated oil operations in its northern was part of the Pacaya Samiria Reserve, a In 2006, after health exams found
Amazon region. A similar situation in wetland supposedly protected under the cadmium and lead in the blood of indig-
Peru, although less widely publicized, Ramsar Treaty, where part of Block 8 is enous villagers, demonstrators occupied
has caused rifts within communities and located. various Pluspetrol facilities, includ-
indigenous organizations between those Discontent over pollution in the ing the airstrip across from the town of
who want jobs and those worried about region—known collectively as the cuatro Trompeteros, on the Corrientes River.
pollution, and over how to handle thorny cuencas or “four watersheds”—has been Those protests ended with a pact known
issues such as remediation of and com- building steadily over the past two as the Acta de Dorissa. Pluspetrol com-
pensation for damages. decades. Five Achuar communities on mitted to remediation of contaminated

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FOCUS ON AMAZONS

areas and to pumping produced wastewa- stalled especially in places where infra-
ter back underground, into either aban- Under Peru’s prior structure such as oil pipelines, drilling
doned wells or new wells drilled for rein- platforms or roads is located on commu-
jection. It also agreed to provide funding consultation law, which nity lands, according to Wendy Pineda,
for a government-run health program for took effect in 2011, who heads AIDESEP’s geographic infor-
the indigenous communities. mation systems team.
The reinjection program was complet- indigenous communities Designation of several new reserves
ed, and the company claims on its web- must be consulted to protect semi-nomadic groups that still
site that it has remediated “almost all” of shun contact with outsiders has also been
the affected sites. However, a 2014 report about any development on hold, and both indigenous leaders and
by the government’s environmental over- project or administrative environmental groups have protested
sight office (Organismo de Evaluación y the expansion of the Camisea gas field—
Fiscalización Ambiental, OEFA) identi- decision affecting their in the tropical lowlands of the southern
fied more than 90 sites requiring cleanup. communal rights. Cusco region—into the Nahua-Kugapa-
In January 2015, that office upheld fines kori-Nanti Reserve, which is inhabited
of nearly US$10 million related to infrac- by both nomadic and recently settled
tions in the Pacaya Samiria Reserve, US$30 million, not including a reme- groups.
which the company had appealed. diation fund and development projects Most of the Peruvian Amazon is now
for communities in the four watersheds. parceled into oil and gas concessions,
A YEAR OF NEGOTIATIONS At a press conference in April, Environ- and the government had planned to auc-
The lease on Block 1AB, now renum- ment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal told tion at least a dozen of them this year,
bered 192, expired in August 2015, but foreign journalists that under its con- but with low international oil prices
when the auction was held by the Peru- tract, PlusPetrol is responsible for reme- making exploration less attractive to
vian government, there were no bidders. diating all damage in the two blocks, companies, those plans are likely to be
The government could simply extend and that the government remediation put on hold. In May, Hunt Oil informed
Pluspetrol’s contract. Until recently, the fund would be used for “contingencies” the Native Federation of the Madre de
indigenous federations in the cuatro or emergencies. Dios River and Tributaries (Federación
cuencas had insisted that all damage At the time the agreement was signed, Nativa del Río Madre de Dios y Afluen-
be remediated and that a consultation conflicts were continuing in parts of tes, FENAMAD) that it was suspend-
should take place before a new round Block 1AB/192, where some communi- ing exploration in part of a block that
of bidding opened on the lease. Under ties, afraid that Pluspetrol might pull overlaps the Amarakaeri Communal
Peru’s prior consultation law, which took out without compensating them for Reserve, a protected area in southeast-
effect in 2011, indigenous communities damages, were negotiating individual ern Peru jointly managed by indigenous
must be consulted about any develop- deals with the company. Some indig- communities and the Peruvian park ser-
ment project or administrative decision enous leaders said the tactics were frag- vice. The company said it had not found
affecting their communal rights. menting the organizations—a common the gas it had expected and that it would
They changed their position, how- complaint in Amazonian regions where reevaluate its data before deciding on its
ever, after nearly a year of negotiations extractive industries operate—and next steps. In August, the government
with government officials on issues called for close monitoring of imple- extended Hunt’s exploration permit by
ranging from territorial rights to health mentation of the March agreement. three years.
to compensation for damages. Under Both territorial rights and prior con- When the damage from the past
an agreement announced in March, the sultation are potential flashpoints, not 40 years will be cleaned up, however,
government decided to go ahead with just there but in other parts of the Peru- remains an open question. Meanwhile
preparations for the auction in parallel vian Amazon where oil and gas conces- in Cuninico, when children break out in
with a consultation, which is now under sions overlap indigenous communities. rashes, mothers worry that it is because
way in the watersheds. More than 1,000 Amazonian indigenous they are bathing in polluted water. And
The 19-point action plan signed by communities in Peru still lack formal they worry about the future. A year after
indigenous leaders and government title, in an area totaling some 20 mil- an oil slick and a mass of dead fish sig-
representatives includes health studies, lion hectares, according to the Intereth- naled a break in the pipeline, they still
measures to improve health care in the nic Association for Development of the have no buyers for their fish.
communities, and installation of tem- Peruvian Amazon (Asociación Interét-
porary water treatment plants. Govern- nica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana, Barbara Fraser is a freelance journalist
ment officials put the total cost at about AIDESEP). Titling applications are based in Lima, Peru.

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