By Danielle Knight
PUYO, Ecuador, July 20 (IPS) –
An army unit in Pastaza province blocked a group of environmentalists from entering the village of San Virgilio Saturday and checking on an alleged oil spill caused by a US company in the Amazon rain forest.
The group of eight persons, which included this correspondent and representatives from two indigenous rights organizations and the Quito-based Ecological Action, had been invited to visit their village by the indigenous community of San Virgilio.
Community members said a new 40 kms flowline built by Arco Oriente had been leaking crude oil for more than one month, very close to their village.
Despite opposition from many indigenous organizations in the area, Arco Oriente – a subsidiary of California based Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) – and Agip Petroleum of Ecuador began pumping crude on July 8 from the tropical rain forests of east Ecuador.
By the end of this year, the company plans to be pumping more than 30,000 barrels per day out of this site in the Villano oil field in Pastaza province called block 10.
The flowline transports raw crude from the drill sites to the brand new Central Processing Facility (CPF) outside the town of Puyo where it is processed and piped to the trans-Ecuadorian pipeline and on to the coastal refineries for foreign sale.
The military has a strong presence in the area of the 40 kms oil flowline, which is directly adjacent to the Quichua indigenous community of San Virgilio.
When the environmentalists tried to enter the path that led to the village, the army of Pastaza said the property was private and that no one except local villagers were allowed entrance to prevent any attack on the pipeline .
‘’I'm sorry, but we have strict orders from the company not to let anyone in that is not from the community,’’ Colonel Alfredo Valladares, chief of the provincial army of Pastaza told IPS.
When told that the federal army had been helpful to the same group earlier that day and had offered to fly them by helicopter to the site of the alleged spill, Valladares said that it made no difference.
‘’It doesn't matter what happens in Quito or what the federal army says, you have to deal with us who have strict orders from the company,’’ he declared.
Along with barring the environmentalists from entering the territory, the Pastaza army refused to allow the group to return to the town of Puyo, from where they had set out. They were told that provincial military authorities had not received authorization to let the group leave.
The group – which included a nine-years-old child – was forced to stay overnight in a nearby house, guarded by several armed soldiers, until the next morning when it was permitted to return to Puyo.
Local community members of San Virgilio who were escorted the group were outraged at the incident.
‘’This is the territory of my ancestors and the company is preventing us from having access to a road that was used by my grandfather,’’ said Flavio Santi, who has family in San Virgilio and also works as communications coordinator for the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE).
Santi denounced the militarization of indigenous territory in the province, calling it a human rights abuse against the Quichua, Shuar and Achuar indigenous groups of Pastaza.
‘’They had no right to detain us without having documentation that gave them the authority to proceed against us in this way,’’added a professor in the area who teaches in both the Quichua language and Spanish.
In a telephone interview, Herb Vickers, a company spokesperson at the ARCO offices in Quito, said that while the company did not give orders to the Pastaza army, the provincial troops were there to protect the company.
‘’We have received direct threats to
blow up the pipeline and so we have had no choice but to
militarize the area,’’ he told IPS.
‘’We have become a target and the military is
just taking proper precautions.’’
He strongly denied that the flowline or pipeline had any leaks and said it was built with the highest environmental standards in mind and monitored daily.
‘’Frankly, I don’t see why environmentalists need to monitor the pipeline,’’ said Vickers.
However Simon Santi, who lives in San Virgilio and worked for Arco Oriente for eight months as a local environmental monitor, said he personally saw four large leaks in the flowline.
‘’When I told the company about the leaks they told me not to put it in my report or that they would clean it up,’’ he said. ‘’But it has never been fixed and continues to leak onto the ground.’’
In one area, a leak had created a five square meter pool of raw crude onthe ground, he said. Rain was washing this directly into the nearby Likino river used by local indigenous people for fishing.
‘’The oil spill is not more than 50
meters from San Virgilio,’’ he said.
(END/IPS/dk/mk/99) .