Company slated to start producing in the next few days, but indigenous peoples’ lives are at risk

Peru’s state agency promoting oil and gas operations has announced that by the end of this month oil will be produced from new deposits in a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon near the border with Ecuador.

The announcement was made in a press release by Perupetro stating that ‘the date to start commercial extraction is scheduled for 30 November this year’, and that the ‘proven reserves in the lot [called Lot 67] are about 100 million barrels of heavy oil.’

According to Perupetro, the plan is to start producing 6,000 barrels daily and then increase to 30,000 barrels by 2017 and 60,000 barrels by 2019. This plan has been partly confirmed by Peru’s Energy Minister who said at a recent conference that production would start in December at 2,000 barrels daily.

The company operating in Lot 67 is Perenco, which has head offices in London and Paris and is partnered 50% by the Vietnamese state oil company, PetroVietnam.

‘We will not comment on specific dates but we have publically stated that commercial production is set to commence in 2013,’ Nicolas de Blanpre, Perenco’s Head of Communications, told The Guardian.

However, although Perupetro’s statement doesn’t acknowledge it, Lot 67 is right in the middle of a proposed reserve for indigenous peoples living in what Peruvian laws calls ‘voluntary isolation’ (IPVI) and who could be decimated by contact with oil workers or other outsiders.

The reserve was proposed 10 years ago before the oil deposits were declared commercially-viable in 2006, but it still hasn’t been created. In July this year the Vice-Ministry of Inter-Culturality – the government institution responsible for indigenous peoples – revealed its support for the proposed reserve, and a Vice-Ministry spokesperson recently told a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the proposal would be discussed on 5 December by a special cross-sector government commission focusing on IPVI.

A Peruvian law from 2006 states that ‘indigenous reserves’ for IPVI are ‘intangible’, prohibiting ‘any activity different to the uses and ancestral customs of its indigenous inhabitants’ and prohibiting the granting of ‘rights involving the exploitation of natural resources, except those for subsistence purposes of the peoples living there and those that allow exploitation to take place in a way that doesn’t affect the indigenous peoples in isolation or initial contact.’

However, the law also contains a loophole stating that exploitation in the reserves can go ahead if considered in the ‘public necessity’ – despite the fact that this loophole appears to contravene international law binding on Peru.

Operations in Lot 67, as well as in neighbouring concessions also overlapping the proposed reserve, have been fiercely criticized by Peruvian and international organizations, with lawsuits filed, media statements issued, and an appeal made to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights back in 2007. In addition to exploiting the oil, Perenco is building a pipeline extension which will run from Lot 67 through the proposed reserve to an existing pipeline.

Perenco defends its operations by saying that since 1995 to the present ‘there has been no evidence of non-contacted tribes within Block 67’, citing a controversial report which it contracted a consultancy, Daimi-Peru, to write.

However, regional indigenous organization ORPIO and national indigenous organization AIDESEP have collected considerable evidence of IPVI in the region immediately surrounding Lot 67, which is split into two sub-lots. One sighting recorded by ORPIO took place in 2008 between these two sub-lots.

Indeed, the existence of IPVI in this region has been explicitly or implicitly acknowledged by a wide range of government institutions, civil society organizations, companies and individuals in Peru and around the world. In addition to ORPIO, AIDESEP and the Vice-Ministry of Inter-Culturality, these include Peru’s Energy Ministry, the Health Ministry, the state Ombudsman, the National Institute for the Development of Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples (INDEPA), the former Natural Resources Institute (INRENA), The Field Museum in the USA, and the company, Barrett Resources, which previously operated in Lot 67 and whose acquisition by Perenco was made public in early 2008.

Moreover, according to Anders Krogh, from NGO Rainforest Foundation Norway, the presence of IPVI in this region has also been acknowledged by the Council of Ethics within Norway’s ‘Government Pension Fund Global’, as reported previously by The Guardian. The Council, says Krogh, basing his claim on several anonymous sources, has made an official recommendation to Norway’s Ministry of Finance that it ‘withdraw all investments’ from Repsol, which operates Lot 39 almost entirely surrounding Lot 67, ‘because it threatens isolated indigenous peoples living between the Napo and Tigre rivers in Peru.’

Asked about the proposed reserve for the IPVI, Perenco’s de Blanpre did not respond, saying instead that his company works with indigenous ‘communities’ – i.e. people who are downriver from Lot 67 and do not live in ‘voluntary isolation‘– and ‘voluntarily supports and finances an extensive Community Relations Plan.’

Asked if it thought that operations in Lot 67 could have serious negative consequences for the IPVI, Perupetro told The Guardian, ‘Lot 67 has an Environmental Impact Assessment which has been approved by the Energy Ministry.’

Names such as ‘Arabela’, ‘Pananujiri’, ‘Taushiro’, ‘Aushiris’ and ‘Abijiras’ have been used to refer to the IPVI in the Napo-Tigre region.