By Dan Molinski
BOGOTA--Top government officials will meet Friday with some 300
U'wa Indians in Colombia's remote northeastern cloud forests near
the Venezuelan border in the hopes of ending a standoff that has
caused a month-long shutdown of the country's second-longest oil
pipeline and forced two major oil companies to cancel contracts to
sell oil.
The 480-mile Cano Limon pipeline, which normally carries 72,000
barrels of oil a day to the coast for export and is used by
Colombian state run oil firm Ecopetrol and Los Angeles-based
Occidental Petroleum, has been shut since March 25 when military
officials said leftist rebels blew up a section of the line that
runs inside the territory of the U'wa Indians.
Dynamite attacks on pipelines by Marxist guerrilla groups that
oppose exploitation of Colombia's resources by foreign
multinationals is common--259 were blown up last year--and the Cano
Limon pipeline is the rebels' favorite target in the oil-producing
nation.
Most rebel attacks on the Cano Limon are repaired within a few
days by specialists from Ecopetrol, which then allows pumping to
resume quickly and causes only a slight decline in production
levels from the Cano Limon field shared by Occidental and
Ecopetrol. But following last month's attack, which spilled oil
onto the U'wa land, tribal members refused to allow repair crews
reach the damaged site.
"The government (Ecopetrol) wanted to do what they always do
after the rebels attack, they wanted to fix the pipeline and then
maybe later clean up some of the spilled oil," Aura Tegria, an U'wa
spokeswoman, said Thursday by telephone. "Well, it's not going to
happen that way anymore, and that's why we're not allowing in the
repairmen."
Representatives at Occidental said they had no comment.
Ms. Tegria said approximately 30 or 40 U'wa members were
blocking the damaged stretch of the pipeline, but said none was
armed or acting in a threatening manner.
The costs to the forced shutdown are rising. Colombia is Latin
America's fourth-largest oil producer and oil is the government's
main source of foreign revenue. The country produces about 1
million barrels a day of oil, so the monthlong shutdown in
production at the Cano Limon field means a 7% drop in overall
output. Because of the area's remoteness and lack of good highways,
the Cano Limon field relies on its pipeline and can't resort to oil
tanker trucks when the pipeline is shut.
"We've obviously had many temporary shutdowns to pipelines or
fields due to rebel attacks, but they usually only last a few
days," an Ecopetrol spokesman said. "But this is now nearly a month
that Cano Limon, both the pipeline and the field, are shut, and
that's the longest I can remember in many years."
Losses already exceed $136 million, the spokesman said, due to a
drop in royalty payments, oil sales and other problems. He said 500
temporary workers at the oil field have been laid off since they
have no work to do.
The Ecopetrol spokesman said Colombia's ministers of mines and
energy as well as the ministers of the interior and environment and
the president of Ecopetrol are all scheduled to attend Thursday's
meeting in an effort to convince the U'wa to let them pass and
repair the pipeline.
The U'was requested President Juan Manuel Santos also attend,
but officials from Ecopetrol said the president's office informed
them he won't be able to make it. Mr. Santos is in the middle of a
re-election campaign for a second four-year term in office. Voting
is May 25 and Mr. Santos is the favorite, though the race is
getting closer.
The U'wa, Colombia's third-largest indigenous group with some
7,000 members, is no stranger to controversy. The group, which sits
on land that for decades was thought to be holding more than a
billion barrels of oil, considers petroleum sacred, calling it "the
blood of Mother Earth." In the 1990s the U'wa threatened mass
suicide if Occidental went ahead with plans to drill on the
Indians' land.
Ms. Tegria, the U'wa spokeswoman, said one of many of the
group's demands tomorrow is that Ecopetrol and the government
remove the section of pipeline that runs along their land.
Ecopetrol officials said that would be impossible, but that they
are willing to discuss all proposals.
Write to Dan Molinski at Dan.Molinski@wsj.com
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