Perenco moves one step closer to building pipeline

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Anglo-French company Perenco has moved one step closer to building an oil pipeline through uncontacted tribes’ land in a remote Amazon region.

Peru’s Energy Ministry has approved the ‘Executive Summary’ of Perenco’s ‘Environmental Impact Assessment’ (EIA) – a report intended to detail the potential environmental consequences of the pipeline.

Before approving the summary, the Ministry insisted Perenco write a ‘contingency plan’ in case of contact between its workers and the uncontacted tribes. This plan said Perenco workers would, in certain instances, deliberately try to establish contact with the tribes and ‘scare and repel them.’

Perenco now needs the Ministry to approve its EIA in full. Survival is urging the company to abandon its plans to build a pipeline and to pull out of the region altogether.

Spanish-Argentine oil giant Repsol-YPF and US energy company ConocoPhillips both hope to explore for oil in the same region.

Survival has written to President Obama, asking him to raise these issues with Peruvian president Alan Garcia when they meet in the White House in three days time.