LIMA: The long-contested expansion of Peru’s main natural gas field has won final regulatory approval despite UN concerns that it could endanger Amazon tribes living in voluntary isolation in pristine jungles.
The Camisea project, located just 100km from Peru’s famed Machu Picchu ruins, has faced fierce opposition from environmental groups since it began in 2003, but strong backing from Peru’s political leaders as a vital economic lifeline.
The approved expansion overlaps with an indigenous reserve populated by about 1,100 people, including an estimated 100 who avoid contact with the outside world.
Peru’s Ministry of Mining and Energy gave the expansion a green light yesterday, approving an environmental impact statement as the nation was focused on a World Court verdict that resolved a maritime dispute with Chile.
Environmentalists, anthropologists and the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had objected that the project could threaten indigenous groups by exposing them to diseases for which they have no natural defenses.
In December, the UN’s special rapporteur for indigenous rights, James Anaya, visited Camisea, which is run by a consortium led by Argentina’s Pluspetrol SA and that includes the US company Hunt Oil Co and the Spanish concern Repsol YPF SA.
Anaya urged an exhaustive study of the expansion’s effect on indigenous communities in the concession as well as consultation with them before proceeding with a $480m exploration phase.
“None of this was done. There has not even been a serious study about the health of the population in the area since 2003,” said Vanessa Cueto, a lawyer for the environmental group Environmental Law and Natural Resources.
The expanded Camisea project will now overlap with about 400 square miles of the indigenous reserve in one of the world’s most biologically diverse rainforests, where the natives live primarily off fishing and hunting.
The environmental impact study says there could be Indians living in voluntary isolation in an area comprising just 8,000 hectares of the overlapping area and says no drilling will occur there.
But Paulo Vilca, who resigned as deputy culture minister for indigenous rights in July over the issue, says that claim has no basis because the government has never done a study to determine where the Indians live. Vilca was one of three ministry officials to step down or be forced out over objections to the expansion, which President Ollanta Humala has firmly supported.
Peru has an estimated 12 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves in two concessions held by the Pluspetrol-led group.
Most of it lies within the 5,500-square-mile concession where the expansion is occurring. The concession, known as Lot 88, already supplies Peru with half its electricity as well as gas for industry, motor vehicles and some homes. The gas from Camisea’s other lot is exported.
A Pluspetrol spokesman in Lima, Carlos Naveda, said the company had no immediate comment on its expansion plants. The consortium has said exploration could take at least 15 months. The Associated Press sought an interview with the current deputy minister for indigenous rights, Patricia Balbuena, but she had not responded to email and telephone requests.
