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November 5, 2007: This website is an archive of the former website, traprockpeace.org, which was created 10 years ago by Charles Jenks. It became one of the most populace sites in the US, and an important resource on the antiwar movement, student activism, 'depleted' uranium and other topics. Jenks authored virtually all of its web pages and multimedia content (photographs, audio, video, and pdf files. As the author and registered owner of that site, his purpose here is to preserve an important slice of the history of the grassroots peace movement in the US over the past decade. He is maintaining this historical archive as a service to the greater peace movement, and to the many friends of Traprock Peace Center. Blogs have been consolidated and the calendar has been archived for security reasons; all other links remain the same, and virtually all blog content remains intact. THIS SITE NO LONGER REFLECTS THE CURRENT AND ONGOING WORK OF TRAPROCK PEACE CENTER, which has reorganized its board and moved to Greenfield, Mass. To contact Traprock Peace Center, call 413-773-7427 or visit its site. Charles Jenks is posting new material to PeaceJournal.org, a multimedia blog and resource center.
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U.S. Military
Aid and Oil Interests in Colombia
http://www.afsc.org/latinamerica/peace/military-aid-oil.htm
American
Friends Service Committee
May,
2003
From the May
2003 issue of Colombia Now!,
AFSC Latin
America/Caribbean Peacebuilding Program's newsletter.
U.S.-based corporations lobbied for U.S. military aid and training to Colombia for almost a year before the U.S. Congress created and approved the $1.3 billion Plan Colombia. The companies, through the U.S.-Colombia Business Partnership— a group founded to represent U.S. companies’ interest in Colombia--pressed the U.S. government for the aid. The American Friends Service Committee and other organizations believe the aid is misguided because military aid only fosters the violence that has a negative impact on business. In addition, many of the companies have questionable connections to human rights violators and environmental destruction and are adding to the instability in Colombia.
Other companies that are part of the U.S.-Colombia
Business Partnership:
Dole Foods
Coca-Cola
Drummond Coal Company
Exxon Mobil
Colgate-Palmolive Co.
Enron Corporation
Occidental Petroleum is one of the clearest examples of the misguided attempts companies have made to secure profits in the context of the Colombian conflict and U.S. “drug war.”
Occidental
Petroleum Corporation’s background
Occidental Petroleum Corporation is one of the largest U.S.-based oil and gas companies. Occidental “discovered” Caño-Limón, Colombia’s second largest oil field. Occidental’s investment in Caño-Limón has yielded hundreds of million dollars annually although the pipeline has been a target of guerrilla forces.
Occidental in
Colombia
Occidental’s Vice President for Public Affairs has made it clear that drug trafficking and attacks by guerrilla forces have disrupted the company’s normal operations. But according to the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), Occidental has also fueled the violence by employing drug-funded paramilitary groups to forcibly remove Colombia’s indigenous populations from potentially oil-rich lands. Paramilitary forces, which benefit from the drug trade and commit 70 percent of the human rights violations, have been utilized to combat the guerrillas who want the oil production in Colombia to be nationalized.
Occidental
lobbying in Washington, D.C.
Between 1996 and 2000, Occidental spent more than $8.6 million (U.S.) lobbying the U.S. government for military aid to Colombia and aid to protect the Caño-Limón pipeline. Recently, the Bush administration allotted $98 million to protect the pipeline.
The real costs
of pipeline protection
According to a report from Witness for Peace, the potential outcomes of the Bush administration’s proposal to spend $98 million on protecting the pipeline are alarming:
1. The $98 million aid allocation represents the first
step down a slippery slope toward major U.S. military investment in
infrastructure protection in Colombia.
U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson said the Caño-Limón pipeline is just one of more than 300 Colombian infrastructure points of strategic interest for the United States. How many of these will Congress and U.S. taxpayers be asked to protect?
2. Fully protecting even just the Caño Limón-Coveñas
pipeline is an impossible task.
The Colombian Brigadier General in charge of protecting this pipeline said he would need a soldier for every three feet of pipeline to provide adequate protection. To prevent bombings would require a massive increase in funding beyond anything being discussed in Congress.
3. Funding a military with a history of gross human
rights violations may implicate the United States in further abuses against
civilians and could discourage much needed professionalism.
Units and aircraft charged with protecting Caño-Limón operations participated in a massacre of eighteen innocent civilians and have yet to be held accountable. Witness for Peace documents several allegations of ties between the 18th Brigade, the police, and the right-wing paramilitaries (AUC) in Arauca—in line with the trend of paramilitary-military ties described by the U.S. State Department in their annual Report on Human Rights Practices.
4. Serious allegations that Occidental Petroleum has made
illegal payments to State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations
(FTOs) call U.S. funding into question.
Both U.S. and Colombian government officials have alleged that Occidental Petroleum has made payments to FTOs. Congress should demand an investigation into these allegations before providing any aid that could directly benefit this company.
5. U.S. taxpayers would effectively be covering
Occidental’s security costs.
The U.S. government successfully lobbied the Colombian government to eliminate a tax that required oil companies operating in Colombia to contribute to their own protection. As a result, Occidental currently pays only 50 cents per barrel in security costs. The Bush administration’s request would require U.S. taxpayers to supplement that with a $3.70 per barrel security subsidy.
6. Protecting the declining Caño- Limón pipeline is a
poor use of taxpayer money.
Even if it were possible to protect the pipeline militarily, the Caño-Limón oil field is past its prime and yield is rapidly declining, according to industry experts.
Occidental’s
human rights record
The following are from www.amazonwatch.org, Oil, Militarization, and Indigenous Peoples:
”In 1992, Occidental Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell acquired oil exploration rights to U'wa ancestral land in partnership with the Colombian government.
“In 1997, under pressure from human rights and environmental groups, Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of the project, fearing a repeat of the human rights violations and ensuing international pressure that marred their Nigerian operations.
“Occidental, however, refused to listen to international concern. In fact, while operational in the area, Occidental, failed to hold a single consultation meeting with the U'wa regarding the project--a violation of both international law and the Colombian Constitution. Occidental estimated that its drilling block (originally called Samoré, now known as Siriri) would yield 1.5 billion barrels of oil --an amount that would meet U.S. consumption levels for a mere three months.”
Human rights organizations have criticized Occidental for its poor human rights record. The company pursued oil exploration in Colombia’s cloud forest, which is home to the U’wa tribe. Three U’wa children were killed after Occidental called the military to break up a peaceful blockade of the road to the drill site. In May 2002, under heavy pressure from human rights and indigenous organizations, Occidental withdrew its operations from U’wa territory.
Occidental’s human rights record was also damaged by a 1998 air raid of the Village of Santo Domingo near the Caño-Limón pipeline. That year, three American pilots from a security firm that Occidental uses to protect its oil interests mistakenly marked Santo Domingo as a hostile target in an anti-guerrilla operation. This led to the killing of eighteen civilians, including nine children.
For more
information on U.S. business interests in Colombia, see: