Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Apr 5 2010 (IPS) – A 200-km oil pipeline that Franco-British oil group Perenco aims to build in the heart of Peru s Amazon jungle region is at the centre of a controversy because of the reported existence of uncontacted native groups in the area.
In early 2008, Perenco acquired the exploration and production rights to Lot 67, which has total reserves of over 300 million barrels.

The firm plans to build a 200-km pipeline, which would connect to an existing one, in order to pipe the oil to Peru s Pacific coast.

A Perenco spokesman told IPS that the company plans to invest 1.5 billion dollars in the project and that oil would begin to be pumped in January 2011.

The oilfield is in Loreto, Peru s northernmost, and largest, region. A remote, sparsely populated Amazon jungle region, Loreto comprises nearly one-third of the country s territory.

According to the Peruvian Rainforest Inter-Ethnic Development Association (AIDESEP), the pipeline would run through the ancestral territory of the nomadic Huaorani, Pananujuri and Aushiri tribes, which live in voluntary isolation in an area known as Napo Tigre.
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The DGAAE, the energy project environmental unit of Peru s Ministry of Energy and Mines, noted in March that Perenco had not included an anthropological contingency plan in its environmental impact study for the pipeline, as required for approval of the study.

The contingency plan is needed in case the company s workers run into uncontacted Indians.

Because of the characteristics of the remote jungle area where the pipeline will be built, and due to the fact that the environmental impact assessments for Lot 39 (worked by Spanish-Argentine energy company Repsol-YPF) and Lot 67 (Perenco s) have already recognised the possible existence of groups living in voluntary isolation, the plan must be presented based on the precautionary principle and in order to avoid conflicts, the DGAAE said in a statement.

In a 2006 study, the ombudsman s office warned that the entry of outsiders to remote jungle regions could have disastrous consequences, due to the reduction of natural resources given the increase in population as well as the introduction of infectious diseases.

The report pointed out that native peoples who previously had little to no contact with the outside world are extremely vulnerable to diseases like syphilis, influenza, diarrhea and respiratory ailments.

Even the common flu poses a serious threat to the lives of these uncontacted peoples, because of their lack of antibodies, the ombudsman s report said.

Mayta Cápac, head of the National Institute for the Development of Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples (INDEPA), a government agency, told IPS that a multisectoral committee in charge of approving the creation of reservations for uncontacted tribes would be meeting in the next two or three weeks.

She said she would propose the formation of a team of experts to investigate the case on the ground.

INDEPA, set up to oversee public policies in defence of indigenous rights, heads the multisectoral commission which is also made up of other government agencies like the Justice Ministry and ombudsman s office, with the participation of civil society organisations as well.

The commission must reach a decision on five requests for the creation of reservations for uncontacted tribes, including Napo Tigre.

The request for the formation of the Napo Tigre reservation was presented by AIDESEP in 2005, but received observations in June 2009 on the grounds that it was not in line with administrative norms or rigorous scientific methodology.

AIDESEP must respond to the observations in order to move ahead with the process, but the commission could at the same time set up a group of experts to verify the presence of uncontacted native groups in the area in question, said Cápac.

The observations merely pointed to formalities, despite the fact that we have provided anthropological studies carried out in 2003 and 2004 and ratified in 2009 based on international standards, AIDESEP told IPS in a written communication.

The indigenous association said that given the possibility that there are isolated tribes in Lot 67, any activity to protect the vulnerable groups must be suspended, as has been done in Brazil.

In 2007, AIDESEP unsuccessfully sought a judicial stay in the case of Napo Tigre, and later filed legal action in the Constitutional Court to attempt to halt extractive industry activities in the area, which is still pending.

For its part, Perenco told IPS that it had carried out a study with 24 experts from different institutions, including INDEPA, which concluded that there was no presence of indigenous people in the area.

The company also stated that within Lot 67 there are no native settlements or villages, and the nearest population is located more than 30 km outside of the Lot.

AIDESEP, however, argued that the company contradicted itself because in its environmental impact study it admitted to the possible presence of isolated indigenous groups, as the DGAAE noted.

Asunta Santillán, an expert in indigenous affairs at Law, Environment and Natural Resources (DAR), a local NGO, said that neither Peru s laws nor institutions guarantee the protection of isolated tribes, despite the boom in oil, natural gas and mining projects.

Santillán told IPS that article five of the law for the protection of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation or a state of initial contact advocates the declaration of their territories as untouchable.

But it cites as an exception those projects that are declared of public necessity , which opens a window for extractive industry activities, she said.

To this imperfect law is added the weakening of INDEPA, which has been passed from one ministry to another without respect for its status as a vice ministry and which does not have sufficient resources to carry out its work, she added.