BOGOTA (Reuters)
- A U.S. oil firm is due to drill a controversial test well in
September in a disputed corner of northeast Colombia where U"wa
Indians have even threatened to commit mass suicide to defend
what they claim as ancestral land rights, the country"s oil
association chief said on Friday.
Los Angeles-based
Occidental Petroleum Corp had been due to sink the Gibraltar-1
well, at an estimated cost of $40 million, in the first half of
this year in the so-called Samore block just outside the government-mandated
limits of the U"wa reservation.
The block
has been hailed as the country"s biggest oil prospect, with
potential crude reserves of between 2 billion and 2.5 billion
barrels. If test drills are successful the field could ensure
supplies of oil, Colombia"s top export earner, well into
the next decade. Leaders of the 7,000-member U"wa community
have so far blocked drilling efforts with legal action and other
protests, insisting the well site encroached on much wider ancestral
lands that belonged to their semi-nomadic forebears. But in Bogota,
Alejandro Martinez, the head of the Colombian Oil Association
which represents private sector oil firms, said: "They (Occidental)
are completing civil engineering works in order to begin drilling
in Samore in September. There were a couple of incidents, they
should have begun in June but it was delayed to September."
An Occidental
spokesman at the company"s Los Angeles headquarters said
he had no comment on when the company would begin drilling the
well. "There are some serious issues with security,"
he said. "We wouldn"t be commenting publicly to give
any advance notice when we"re going to do work. It exposes
peoples lives to danger."
Occidental
chiefs were not immediately available for comment in Colombia.
INDIANS THREATEN MASS SUICIDE TO PREVENT OIL DRILLING In the past,
the U"was have threatened to commit mass suicide to defend
their land and protect the oil which they view as the "lifeblood
of Mother Earth." Marxist guerrillas that operate in the
region and are opposed to foreign multinational involvement in
the oil industry have also attacked construction and engineering
equipment causing further setbacks.
The U"was
have received strong backing in their fight against Occidental
from U.S.-based environmental groups. Last year, three U.S. citizens
working with the U"was in northeast Colombia were kidnapped
and murdered by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
rebels and their bodies dumped across the border with neighboring
Venezuela.
The land dispute
first flared in 1992 when Occidental was granted exploration rights
to the 500,000 acre (200,000 hectare) block. Last year, the government
increased the size of the U"wa reservation in a failed bid
to resolve the wrangle.
Colombia currently
produces an average 710,000 barrels per day of crude and exported
some $2.2 billion of oil in the first half of this year. But proven
reserves, which now stand at 2.3 billion barrels, are dwindling
and could force the country to become a net oil importer again
by 2005 if no major new finds are made.
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