May 10, 2007 may be a day that Occidental Petroleum Corporation executives never forget. As of last Thursday, Oxy moved to the top of a growing list of transnational corporations being faced to confront the impact of their overseas operations on indigenous communities and the environment as 25 indigenous Achuar people brought suit against the oil giant in U.S. courts for egregious harm caused by the company’s 30-year operations in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon.
“With this lawsuit, I am here demanding Oxy clean up and compensate for the contamination it left in the Río Corrientes region,” says Apu Tomás Maynas Carijano, a plaintiff in the case and an Achuar traditional leader. “We can no longer eat the fish or drink the water. Our children are guaranteed death unless Oxy acts now.”
The suit comes on the heels of the release of A Legacy of Harm, a damning report issued by Earth Rights International, Amazon Watch and Lima-based NGO Racimos de Ungurahui detailing the environmental impacts of the U.S. company’s hydrocarbon exploration, production and transportation operations on five Achuar communities (José Olaya, Nueva Jerusalén, Antioquía/Jibaro, Sauki, and Pampa Hermosa) in the Corrientes River Basin, and the health problems suffered by the area’s 1,500 indigenous residents.
“Before we could just drink straight from the water. We could drink from any stream,” says a man from Antioquía quoted in the report. “But it’s not like that now. Now it’s a four to five hour walk to get fresh water.”
An accumulated 9 billion barrels of toxic oil by-products (known as “produced water”) has been dumped directly into rivers and streams that the Achuar use for bathing fishing and drinking (at a rate of about 850,000 per day) over the past 30 years, the report finds.
This, in addition to accidental spills, has also diminished and contaminated the fishing population. “The fish were large before but now they are very skinny,” the same Antioquía man explains. “And when we gut the fish petroleum spills out.”
Moreover, the report finds, the company used open, unlined earthen pits lacking protective barriers to store drilling fluids, crude oil and crude by-products. Regular overflows caused the waste to sink into surrounding soil and ground water. Substantial proportions of the children in the affected communities now have excessively high levels of lead and cadmium in their blood.
“Oxy’s harmful practices have violated rights guaranteed to the Achuar people under international law,” the 60-page document concludes, “including rights to life, health and a healthy environment, and their rights as indigenous peoples to participate in development decisions affecting their lives and territory.” Specifically, the company is liable under both Peruvian and U.S. law.
Technically, Occidental no longer operates in Corrientes basin. Pluspetrol took over Oxy’s operations in 2000. But given Oxy’s three decade long history and the fact that Argentine company uses Oxy-developed infrastructure and follows its predecessor’s practices to the letter, most still believe the U.S. company is responsible for the area’s health and environmental problems.
The report was to be a warning: Here’s the proof, Oxy. Clean-up or face the consequences.
“When and whether the suit is filed depends on Oxy,” commented ERI’s legal director Marco Simons during a May 3rd media conference call in which UB participated. “They could try to resolve this without litigation. But if there’s no response, then legal action could come in the near future.”
Oxy chose silence and ERI made its move on behalf of the Achuar plaintiffs.
The decision to take sue in the U.S. seemed the best option after years of trying to solve the problems via the Peruvian government.
According to the report, the National Office of Natural Resource Evaluation declared the Achuar oil drilling area to be “the country’s most damaged environmental region.” Yet the government has taken little action to curb Oxy’s abuses despite constant pleas from affected peoples, notes Lily La Torre López, a human rights attorney for Racimos de Ungurahui.
In October 2004, the Achuar protested and temporarily stopped oil production in the Corrientes River region, forcing the company and the Peruvian government to the negotiating table. Written accords were signed that promised compensation and changes in operations and waste disposal in the 1.2 million acre region that produces 42% of Peru’s total oil. But, Torre explains, these agreements were not satisfactory for the Achuar: they only cover Pluspetrol’s relatively recent operations, not Oxy’s 30 catastrophic history, and implementation has been slow.
“Overall, our government doesn’t pay attention to the problems of indigenous communities,” La Torre López said on the May 3rd conference call.
While the suit does not put a dollar amount on its claims, the plaintiffs would like to see massive clean-up, health care for affected peoples and monetary compensation. Oxy, with an already notorious reputation in Latin America (the oil company was proven to have collaborated with paramilitaries in Colombia and government military forces in Ecuador to violently force indigenous communities to go along with company’s oil production plans), faces an expensive pay-out.
The Achuar’s legal team—ERI and the law firm of Schonbrun, DeSimone, Seplow, Harris and Hoffman—has already proven its weight in these types of legal claims. The team filed suit against oil firm Unocal in 1996 for assisting and encouraging the torture, murder and rape of Burmese villagers by government soldiers when Unocal wanted to build its pipeline —and forced a historic settlement.
“Companies will give greater weight to this sort of political risk when they consider going into some of these countries,” commented Catherine Boggs, a partner at the law firm Baker & McKenzie who deals with international oil and mining operations, to The Nation at the time of the settlement.
The Achuar and their allies hope that the Oxy suit will be a similar wake-up call to transnational hydrocarbon companies that often cut corners when operating internationally.
But the strong court action also signals a trend of greater importance for the people of Latin America: the Achuar are calling for no more transnationals on their territory—an echo that can be heard from indigenous communities across the continent.
“We want Oxy to be held accountable for what they have done,” said Andrés Sandi Mucushua, President of FECONACO (Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River) in the May 3rd conference call. “But, we’ve decided that we don’t want transnationals here anymore. Our current struggle is to prevent any new oil companies from entering our land. We can’t live like this anymore, with people dying everyday.”
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