Watching The World: The extravagant allegation club

Aug. 10, 2009
No one in the oil and gas industry is immune to extravagant allegations, as evidenced by one court case after another.

No one in the oil and gas industry is immune to extravagant allegations, as evidenced by one court case after another. This time, China National Petroleum Corp. is the target.

CNPC helicopters visited camps of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) to provide logistical and medical support, according to a former hostage who escaped from the guerrillas.

The CNPC helicopters transported “doctors, medicine, provisions, and even guerrillas,” according to former Sen. Oscar Tulio Lizcano, who was kidnapped on Aug. 5, 2000, and escaped in 2008.

Tulio Lizcaino told Spanish news agency EFE that the CNPC helicopters visited FARC camps seven times in 2006 “paradoxically, when the area was under military siege and President (Alvaro) Uribe’s democratic security (policy) was in full force.”

FARC guerrillas

FARC, founded in 1964, has 8,000-17,000 fighters. The Uribe administration, which has made fighting the FARC a top priority, has obtained billions of dollars in US aid for counterinsurgency operations.

“I don’t understand why the country hasn’t reacted...I investigated not only the (demobilized rebels) who received (assistance) from that Chinese multinational but also those who were transported in those helicopters,” said Tulio Lizcaino, referring to peasants and mayors who allegedly accepted flights.

There has been no independent confirmation of Tulio Lizcaino’s claims about CNPC. However, in 2006 the Chinese firm did join with ONGC Videsh Ltd. to acquire US oil firm Ominex De Columbia and began actively exploring the country with helicopters in June that year.

That August, rebels of FARC’s rival, the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), kidnapped a helicopter pilot and two local workers from CNPC’s exploration unit, the Bureau of Geological Prospecting (BGP).

BGP targeted

It marked the second time that BGP contract workers had been kidnapped since the company began exploring for oil in Colombia earlier in the year. In June 2006, FARC rebels kidnapped two other BGP workers.

Did CNPC do a helicopter deal with FARC in order to keep exploring for oil? Or is Tulio Lizcaino making unfounded allegations?

Western firms have long had to deal with such claims.

In 2003, Alberto Galvis sought punitive damages from Occidental Petroleum for the deaths of his mother, a sister, and a cousin, who were among 18 civilians killed when a Colombian military helicopter dropped a bomb on a village near the Cano Limon Pipeline in an antiguerrilla operation.

Occidental was named in the lawsuit because pilots of AirScan (a security firm Occidental used to protect its oil interests) mapped targets for the Colombian military.

Occidental Petroleum denied any responsibility either for the bombing or for the deaths of the civilians.

It remains for CNPC to comment about Tulio Lizcaino’s claims. Meanwhile, let’s welcome China’s oil and gas industry to the club.