Photo: Luis Angel Saavedra

For the U’wa people of the Colombian Amazon, oil is the blood of the earth. Once it is extracted they say the earth will dry up and become angry: the people will die.

So when the US-based Occidental Petroleum began to explore for oil in their territory the U’wa resisted what they saw as an attack on their sacred lands. Several times they have forced Occidental to stop drilling. And they’re not alone. From the Niger delta in Nigeria to the Orinoco delta in Venezuela, people are beginning to look for alternatives to oil development.

It was this resistance that sparked the formation of Oilwatch. In February 1996, 15 organizations from Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, Gabon, Thailand, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia and Brazil met in Ecuador with the goal of connecting and supporting these peoples. ‘Indigenous people here were battling to force companies to pay for damages or stop drilling in their territories. This attracted the attention of groups in other countries, initially from Peru and Nigeria. Soon there was sharing of strategies,’ says Esperanza Martínez from Oilwatch’s Quito headquarters. Oilwatch works to keep the oil frontier from expanding and to force oil companies to consider the conservation of the planet.

The network now has members in more than 50 countries. They include indigenous groups like the Association of Wayoo Women in Venezuela and the Organization of Indigenous Nationalities of Colombia. But there are also environmental organizations like the National Alliance for Nature in the Republic of Congo; church groups like the Ecumenical Service for Peace in Cameroon; human-rights groups like Environmental Rights Action of Nigeria; and Northern organizations including Greenpeace and the US-based Corporate Watch.

Beneath Martínez’s cheerful, outgoing manner lies steely determination. ‘We don’t want petroleum activity just to improve,’ she says. ‘We want it to stop.’

The group has identified four key areas of concern: destruction of ecosystems and biological diversity; human rights and the undermining of democracy; the inequity of the multilateral banking system; and the links between global climate change and fossil fuels. By building networks of solidarity among peoples of the South, Oilwatch encourages threatened communities to question company promises.

The group produces a series of electronic bulletins and campaigning materials as well as technical reports on oil company operations which are published in several languages, including native languages. However, the most effective information exchange comes when people from one community visit another, sharing their stories and their strategies for fighting back. Martínez mentions the case of Lorenzo Muelas, an indigenous person from Colombia who travelled to the Niger delta to witness firsthand the environmental destruction caused by Shell and other oil companies.

‘When he returned home he described to his village the disaster that will befall them if they allow drilling in their territory. These isolated communities where exploration is just beginning need to know what has happened in Nigeria or in the Orinoco, or elsewhere,’ says Martínez.

Oilwatch, Alejandro de Valdez
N24-33 y La Gasca, Casilla 17-15-246-C, Quito, Ecuador
E-mail: oilwatch@uio.satnet.net

Luis Angel Saavedra,
Quito, Ecuador.

The southern coast of Brittany, drenched in oil last year when the oil tanker Erika broke in two, is slowly recovering. The tanker’s main cargo, a thick glutinous bitumen, was swept on to the beaches and cliffs by storm-force waves.

Driving from St Nazaire to Lorient one can see the clean-up is still in progress. On the Guerande peninsula, next to an interminable row of shuttered summerhouses, we see small groups of whiteclad workers scraping the sand with trowels, looking as if they are on some archaeo-logical dig. Benoit Bonnell, marine biologist and president of the Collectif Citoyen anti Marée Noire (Citizens Against Blackened Seas) explains that they are unemployed people from all over France, brought in to help clean the beaches.

Further along, other men and women, clad in yellow oilskins of TotalFinaElf, are blasting the asphalt-coated rocks with pressurized hot water. The oil that runs off is collected on plastic sheeting, then sucked up into tanks. It’s a ‘scorched earth policy’ leaving nothing alive. Jean Pierre Labbé, spokesperson for the oil companies, describes the cleaning process as ‘rebuilding the eco-system’.

A cribleuse which looks like a large mower is pushed along the beach, crushing everything bigger than a grain of sand – which means all life from plants, to cockles, to birds-eggs. The mayors in all the tourist resorts have fallen for this monster. They see it as a way of cleaning the beaches to a Mediterranean-style whiteness, removing anything that belongs but ‘doesn’t look nice’. TotalFinaElf has donated a cribleuse to any municipality that’s asked for one. More than 150 million tonnes of sand has been removed from the beaches and brought to the Elf refinery at Donges where it still awaits treatment.

Laurent Brucy of the Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (League for the Protection of Birds – LPO) points out that the decision to clean the sand with the cribleuse has wiped out thousands of fledgling seabirds. In order to have the beaches spic-and-span for the first tourists, cleaning was done at the height of the breeding season. In addition, 300,000 oil-soaked guillemots, gannets and puffins died in the immediate wake of the disaster. Another 64,000 were brought to the LPO cleaning stations of which only 20,000 survived.

LPO is lobbying to enforce double hulls on tankers, better surveillance at sea, more frequent and thorough inspections and mandatory onshore cleaning of tanker hulls.

Greenpeace France would like to see both the carrier and the cargo’s owner assume liability in case of accident. Says Greenpeace Director Bruno Rebelle: ‘The cleaning has been far too harsh and a large part of the billion francs that TotalFinaElf has paid out has just added to the damage already done.’

Collectif Citoyen anti Marée Noire,
Boulay, 44350 St. Moulf, France
E-mail: winrun@club/internet.france

Aileen Osland Hennes,
Calvados, France.

Photo: www.savekirthar.org

A feisty coalition of environment groups has challenged the plans of a pair of petroleum companies to drill for gas in Pakistan’s largest national park – home to some rare species of mammals, birds and reptiles. The groups, including the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) have taken Premier Oil and Royal/Dutch Shell to the highest court in the province of Sindh, where the park is located.

‘We will fight this planned exploration till the last minute,’ says coalition spokesperson Farhan Anwar.

Nearly 20,000 tribal people live in and around Kirthar National Park which is located 150 kilometres north of Karachi. It is home to several rare or threatened animal species including the Sindh ibex, urial sheep and the chinkara gazelle. The park also contains historic forts and archaeological sites dating back to 3500 BC.

In July 1996, the Nawaz Sharif Government opened the 27-year-old park to prospectors and invited Britain’s Premier Oil to search for an estimated three trillion cubic feet of gas believed trapped in the porous rock. The company was allowed to prospect in 90 per cent of the park, which spreads over an area of 308,733 hectares. In 1998, Premier Oil and Shell formed a joint venture. The Pakistani state retains a 20-per-cent share in the project.

Tribal peoples in the area, who are mostly nomads, are by no means opposed to the oil companies. ‘If somebody wants to explore for gas in our area we will welcome it. At least it might bring proper roads and other facilities,’ quips cattle herder Mohammed Purial. Yousaf Ali who works as park guide says: ‘Exploration for gas will not affect the animals. Even if it did, they will simply leave to find a new place to live outside the immediate area.’

But environmentalists believe exploration in the park is illegal under a 1972 ‘wildlife ordinance’ which clearly prohibits ‘clearing or breaking up of any land for cultivation, mining or any other purpose’. The Sindh Wildlife Amendment Act of 1993 also provides an ‘ironclad constitutional safeguard to protected areas’, according to one environmentalist based in Islamabad.

The Government claims the country needs the park’s gas for national development and to lower the oil import bill. Of the 42 million barrels of oil consumed in Pakistan in 1998-99, 26 million barrels were imported – a major drain on the foreign exchange reserves. The country also has a foreign debt of $32 billion and faces a $2 billion trade deficit.

‘Under these circumstances we have to explore local energy sources,’ said an official from the petroleum and natural resources ministry.

Green groups reject the argument, noting that the new gas will do little to solve Pakistan’s long-term energy needs. They charge that Kirthar is an unholy public-private partnership that works against both the people and the environment.

‘If they can explore in Kirthar today, against the country’s laws, all protected areas will be an open field for them,’ worries Farhan Anwar.

Sustainable Development Policy Institute,
3 UN Blvd., Diplomatic Enclave N0 1, G-5, Islamabad. 
E-mail: sdpi@sdpi.org

Muddassir Rizvi,
Karachi, Pakistan.