Progress!! New Leases Mean That 75% Of Peruvian Amazon Region Now Open For Oil & Gas Drilling

[hatrack]

Perupetro, the Peruvian government's oil and gas corporate leasing body, announced last week that it will open an additional 25 lots for oil and gas exploration in the Amazon covering an area of 10 million hectares (nearly 25 million acres).

Peru's national Amazon indigenous group, AIDESEP, criticized the move calling it a 'new threat' to Peru's indigenous group. According to Amazon Watch these new lots mean that 75 percent of the Peruvian Amazon is now open to oil and gas exploration and drilling.

"Peru is opening some of the most remote regions of the Amazon to oil drilling, threatening some of the most biodiverse forests on the planet and the lives of the indigenous peoples who depend on this forest for their livelihoods," said Atossa Soltani, Amazon Watch Executive Director in a press release. "The current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a clear demonstration of the risks involved. An oil spill in the Amazon would create an ecological disaster." Indigenous groups have long been fighting big oil in the South American country. Last year the conflict turned violent: a standoff between indigenous protestors and government police ended with 23 police officers and at least 10 protestors dead.


Oil and gas blocks in the western Amazon as of February 2010. Solid yellow indicates blocks already leased out to companies. Hashed yellow indicates proposed blocks or blocks still in the negotiation phase. Protected areas shown are those considered strictly protected by the IUCN (categories I to III). Image modified from Finer M, Jenkins CN, Pimm SL, Keane B, Ross C, 2008 Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon: Threats to Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples. PLoS ONE 3(8): e2932. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002932

EDIT

A study earlier in the year found that 41 percent of the Peruvian Amazon was already covered by 52 active oil and gas concessions. The space under concession had grown six times in seven years. The study also found that many of the concessions infringed on protected areas and indigenous territory, exacerbating the conflict between indigenous groups and the Peruvian government, led by President Alan Garcia who is known for his inflammatory rhetoric against indigenous groups, labeling them "confused savages" among other derogatory terms.

EDIT/END

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0524-hance_amazon_oil.html

[AndyA]

1. Oil whores - oil addicts. They just can't stop.

Oil must be like tobacco, there's something put in it intentionally to get people addicted to it.

You can watch your friends die slow, painful deaths. And when the funeral is over, you get in your car and light a cigarette!

Seems the same with oil. The powers that be just can't say no. We're going to have to force them to change to renewable forms of energy, because they will kill themselves and all of us trying to get that last gallon of oil out of the ground. :(

[Auggie]

3. A very few people are going to be adding to their already immeasurable wealth...

and for what reward?

Bragging rights?

[AndyA]

They are way past bragging rights.

They have so much, they really don't know what to do with it. But being addicts, they have to have more, more, more. And they will destroy everything in their path to get it.

[AndyA]

5. They are way past bragging rights.

They have so much, they really don't know what to do with it. But being addicts, they have to have more, more, more. And they will destroy everything in their path to get it.

[phleshdef]

2. I was thinking about this. The US banning offshore drilling might be futile...

...if other countries on this side of the hemisphere don't ban it as well.

[louis-t]

4. Prepare for more long-dormant microbes to be unleashed

as well.