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NEWS August 20 2001
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| OXY fails to find oil in U’wa land Experimental oil drilling by Occidental Petroleum (OXY) in North-East Colombia on land belonging to the U’Wa people has been given up after the well failed to produce. The company’s withdrawal from the Gibraltar 1 site has been greeted as a victory by the U’wa, who have carried out a sustained campaign of non-violent resistance, in which a number of people have been killed by security forces, since the drilling rights were granted in 1992. The U’wa had recently turned to traditional religious rituals to ‘hide the oil’ from the drilling – and they appear to have succeeded. The U'wa resistance has inspired a massive international solidarity movement that has captured headlines with hundreds of peaceful demonstrations. More recently, the U'wa and their supporters been organizing to stop U.S. military aid to Colombia, of which OXY is an influential proponent. Using tactics ranging from blockades at the drill site, lawsuits, shareholder resolutions, banner drops, and non-violent civil disobedience, the U'wa along with environmental and human rights activists have confronted Occidental and its major shareholders including Fidelity Investments, former US Vice-President Al Gore and Alliance Capital/Sanford Bernstein. The withdrawal is yet another blow to Oxy's operations in Colombia which have suffered significant losses this year. The company's Cano Limon field and pipeline have been paralyzed since February 17 as a result of more than 110 guerrilla bombings so far this year. In addition, OXY's private security contractor, AirScan, was recently implicated in one of Colombian Military's worst civilian massacres putting OXY in the center of yet another controversy. In 1998, three American pilots working for AirScan guided Colombian military's attack on the Santo Domingo village that killed 12 civilians including 9 children. U’wa ancestral land is still threatened by oil exploration by the Spanish company Repsol, who is just beginning exploratory drilling in the Capachos 1 block. "This is a battle that we have won, but the war continues, because the U'wa territory is not only Gibraltar 1," said Roberto Perez, President of the U'wa Traditional Authority in a communiqué "The blood spilled from the three North Americans indigenous activists and other supporters who were killed, the loss of our U'wa children in the violent evictions, the humiliations of the armed forces, the cries of the U'wa children and elders in the peaceful mobilizations, the challenge to resist the aggressions by the Colombian State and OXY, will not go unpunished. It will be a bittersweet memory that will remain in the minds of those who participated directly an indirectly in the most difficult moments of this process," said Perez. Source: http://www.amazonwatch.org/newsroom/newsreleases01/jul31_uwa.html |