Oxy Claims Guerrilla Threats Behind Local Tribe's Opposition To Its Colombian Exploration Project

A sample of guerilla terrorism targeting Colombia's oil industry

Occidental Petroleum Corp. has endured a widely publicized imbroglio involving the threat by a Colombian Indian tribe, the U'wa, to commit mass suicide if Oxy explores for oil on their territory.

The mainstream U.S. media reporting on the situation has focused on the potential for human tragedy and the public relations dilemma that the threat-used by environmentalist pressure groups as an Internet "call to action"-poses for Oxy.

The upshot is that a postulated billion-barrel oil field is locked up in a standoff in which Oxy has the legal right to explore its Samoré block in Colombia but remains stymied over what has become an international cause celebre.

But Oxy contends the real story focuses on the role guerrilla violence has played in the controversy, going so far as to say the U'wa originally approved Oxy exploration in their territory, but persistent guerrilla violence and intimidation forced the tribe to reversed its stance.

It shows that energy company security issues are not always readily apparent and often are intertwined with community relations concerns-in fact, with the latter spiraling out of control to the point that they can scuttle a major project.

In Samore's case, the project is seen as critical to helping Colombia maintain its relatively new status as a major exporter of crude oil in years to come, as well as another litmus test of the petroleum industry's willingness to chase upstream opportunities in a country with one of the highest political risk factors in the world.

It also shows that, while an early commitment to a strong community relations effort can be an essential part of an energy company's security strategy, the challenge for Oxy is to convince all concerned that resolving security concerns with the Colombian guerrillas near its Samoré block is a key to regaining the U'wa trust and cooperation.

Background

The U'wa indigenous tribe, a semi-nomadic people whose reservation lies within Oxy's 400,000-acre Samoré block in the Colombian Llanos region, have threatened to jump en masse from a cliff if Oxy proceeds with exploration and development in the area.

Oxy has promised not to drill on the U'wa reservation, but the tribe claims surrounding territory as well and has threatened suicide if development proceeds.

Oxy has completed seismic studies in the area and says Samoré could be comparable in potential with Colombia's giant 1.5 billion bbl Cusiana-Cupiagua oil field complex. The Samoré prospect is traversed by the crude oil pipeline that links the Oxy-discovered Cano Lim?n giant oil field with the Cove?as oil export terminal on the Caribbean coast.

The last legal hurdle was cleared in March, but with the U'wa still threatening to jump from a cliff, Oxy says it is reluctant to proceed unless the government helps it strike some kind of accord with the tribe and its 5,000 members.

Given the U'wa sucide threat, Oxy has more to lose than just its $12 million investment to date in Samoré. The company has long coveted Samoré as potential replacement for Cano Lim?n, the 1 billion-bbl oil field 150 miles east of Samoré that pushed Colombia into energy self sufficiency and export status when it went on line in 1985. Cano Lim?n is now in decline, producing 180,000 b/d.

But the U'wa are threatening to repeat a collective suicide that some claim the tribe committed in the 17th century in the face of Spanish colonial oppression. The threat is somewhat diluted by the lack of any historical record of the earlier suicide; historians familiar with the region doubt it ever happened.

Legally, the way seemed clear in March for Oxy to begin exploratory drilling in Samoré, when the nation's top administrative court reaffirmed the company's right to drill on the land, finally settling an issue raised in the 1991 Colombian constitution that gives Colombia's 80 indigenous groups consultative-but not veto-power over the exploitation of natural resources.

The court said in effect that Oxy's proposed drilling area is outside U'wa territory and jurisdiction.

"We have not entered U'wa land and have no intention of entering their reservation," Oxy Vice-Pres. Larry Meriage said. Despite the ruling, the U'wa have not budged in their opposition, and tribal leaders visited the U.S. early in May, sponsored by U.S. environmental groups, to lobby the U.S. State Department, members of Congress, and the press.

A meeting with Oxy executives early in May in Los Angeles produced no breakthroughs.

Guerrilla intimidation

Citing the U'wa approval of initial seismic studies in 1992, Oxy maintains that the U'wa tribe is protesting Samoré at the point of a gun; that guerrilla intimidation changed their minds and is at the root of their opposition.

There is no love lost between Oxy and the guerrillas: Oxy's Cano Lim?n pipeline has been blown up 460 times by guerrillas since 1985 because the company has refused to pay protection money, Oxy said.

In an interview, U'wa Chief Roberto Cobaria denied that the guerrillas forced him to oppose the project, saying that the extraction of petroleum would cause the collapse of the tribe's "spiritual and physical worlds." The spills caused by the inevitable guerrilla bombings would ruin U'wa hunting, fishing, and agriculture, the chief said, promising to carry through with the suicide threat.

However, tracking Oxy's chronology of events on the Samoré block points clearly to a campaign of intimidation by the guerrillas followed by an U'wa change of heart, the company claims.

In a letter to the New York Times last November disputing that newspaper's account of the controversy, Meriage said the reporter's "lack of careful research" may have caused her to miss a much more important story.

"Since 1964, Colombians have lived through civil war, three guerrilla insurgencies, the rise of drug trafficking, and widespread social breakdown.

"The U'wa live in an area which is largely controlled by the country's two strongest guerrilla movements, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN).

"As the...chronology (see table, p. 39) shows, U'wa leaders were on the verge of signing a cooperation agreement with Oxy in September 1993, when threats from the ELN apparently deterred them. Since then, they have alternated between denouncing guerrilla intimidation to the authorities and trying to work with Oxy and then retreating when the lack of government assistance and protection has left them exposed to the guerrillas again."

Meriage then described the controversy as spawned from "the tragedy of a civil war in which both Indians and oilmen are the victims, and political opportunists try to derive benefits of their own."

He claims the apparently apocryphal story of 17th century mass suicide can in fact be traced to a local activist who also had "appeared outside the (Cano Lim?n pipeline) Samoré pumping station in September 1993 and persuaded the U'wa not to sign their earlier agreement with Oxy."

Bogus history?

Oxy said it takes the threat seriously but says the tribe's opposition has become an international cause celebre, hyped by reports of a 17th century mass suicide that may have not happened.

Oxy commissioned an extensive historical search of more than 100 missionary and colonial sources by Harvard University Prof. Ted Macdonald, and the anthropologist, who specializes in Latin America, turned up no record of the suicide, the company said.

Jane Rausch, a University of Massachusetts history professor who wrote a book on the history of the Colombian llanos (plains) region and who has worked in the area since 1964, has never heard of the episode.

"I've looked through everything, and I can't find any reference to it, and I wrote the history of that region during the Colonial period," Rausch said.

Outlook

Samore's future is unclear. At presstime, three Colombian cabinet ministers had scheduled a trip to the U'wa reservation on May 28 to try to hash out a deal acceptable to the tribe.

Meanwhile, Oxy continues to wait for a government-mediated accord with the U'wa-one which it believes should include the allocation of more oil royalties to indigenous tribes.

While it vows never to set foot on the U'wa reservation without the tribe's express permission, the possibility of drilling elsewhere on the Samoré block remains an open question: Would that reignite opposition? And what role would guerrilla violence and intimidation play in that renewed opposition?

Throughout Latin America's rain forest regions, oil and gas companies such as Oxy have resolved or headed off security problems with indigenous people by implementing strong community relations programs (OGJ, Apr. 21, 1997, p. 37).

But given the stranglehold the guerrillas have in the Samoré block region (see maps, p. 38) and elsewhere in Colombia (see maps and charts, p. 42-43), Oxy's challenge becomes one of resolving the security problem first before it can resolve the community relations problem-and thus be enabled to explore for a world-class oil field.