Ecuadorean Indians demand end to oil exploration

Ecuadorean Indians demand end to oil exploration

Quito (Platts)--11Jul2005


Huaoroni Indians from Ecuador's Amazon will not recognize an agreement signed
by one of their past leaders with Brazil's Petrobras, which gave the company
their blessing to operate in their ancestral lands, members of the tribe said
at a press conference Monday. 

About 150 members of the communities who traveled, some for days, to reach
Quito said that they will increase protests until Petrobras and other oil
companies end drilling near their homelands. "We want to end oil exploration
because it is destroying our culture," said Enqueri Eguenguime, vice president
of the Huaorani organization ONHAE. 

The group will march to the capital building on Tuesday to present a letter to
President Alfredo Palacio demanding a halt to oil exploration as well as
logging and mining in the Amazon region. Petrobras received permission last
Aug 19 to begin exploration inside Yasuni National Park in the eastern Amazon
region, where about 1,000 of the remaining estimated 4,200 Huaoroni live. The
park, the country's largest, is a UNESCO protected biosphere area.

The residents, plus several environmental groups, complain that the
exploration and especially construction of a 32.4-mile road inside the park
will hurt the environment and further affect the Huaoroni culture. The
Huaoroni are regarded as fierce fighters, and were one of the last indigenous
groups in Ecuador to have much contact with the outside world. "We will wage
war on the invaders," Pego Miipo said, in Huaoroni, through a translator.
Miipo, like several protestors, carried a two-yard-high lance and wore only a
bellyband, bead necklaces and a feather headdress. 

Petrobras officials in Quito were not available for comment, but the company
has in the past said that it is "highly conscious" of the level of social and
environmental sensitivity in the area. The company has been given permission
by the government to build in an area of almost 500 acres in the 2.4-mil acre
park, where Repsol YPF and Occidental Petroleum also have drilling rights.

Petrobras has produced an average of 23,135 b/d so far this year in its other
concession area, Block 18, located about 20 miles southwest of the jungle town
of Lago Agrio. Block 31 is located deeper in the Ecuadorean Amazon region,
about 180 miles east of Quito, near the border with Peru. It holds probable
reserves of 230-mil bbl. Petrobras plans to invest about $100-mil in Ecuador
through 2010.

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