Hopes pinned on French company to overturn oil and gas deficit
February 17, 2009
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High-ranking officials in the Peruvian energy sector are pinning their hopes on a French company to overturn Peru’s billion dollar oil and gas deficit, announced last week.
‘It is hoped that Peru will overturn its deficit in the next few years through a number of different projects, particularly through the exploitation of oil in ‘Lot 67’, owned by the French company Perenco,’ said Guillermo Ferreyros, the president of the ‘Hydrocarbon Committee’ from Peru’s mining, oil and energy trade association, SNMPE.
Perenco is expected to invest more than $1 billion in Lot 67, according to Peru’s Ministry of Mines. Perenco estimates Lot 67 holds more than 300 million barrels of oil and has the potential to produce up to 100,000 barrels a day. Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, has personally visited the site and expressed hopes it will transform the Peruvian economy.
Perenco only recently received permission from the Peruvian government to work in Lot 67. The company has announced plans to drill 100 oil wells from ten platforms.
But Lot 67 is home to at least two of the world’s last uncontacted tribes. These tribes live without contact with the outside world and are extremely vulnerable to any form of contact with outsiders because of their lack of immunity to disease. Contact with Perenco workers could decimate the Indians living there.
Despite Mr Ferreyros’s comments, Perenco’s work in Lot 67 has come under fire in Peru from Indigenous organisations defending the uncontacted tribes’ rights and lands. Peru’s Minister of Energy, Pedro Sánchez, said recently the Peruvian government would ‘reevaluate’ its potential investment in the project given the decline in world oil prices.
SNMPE disclosed that Peru’s deficit has reached $2.4 billion, mainly as a result of a significant increase in fuel imports and an increase in prices. The deficit has worsened from 2007’s $1.4 billion.
Survival Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘Deficit or no deficit, Lot 67 belongs to uncontacted tribes and no oil work should take place there. Both Mr Ferreyros and Perenco need to understand that international legislation – legislation that Peru has ratified – recognises the Indians as the rightful owners of that land.’
