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BOGOTA
(Reuters) - A U.S. oil firm is due to drill a controversial
test well in September in a disputed corner of northeast
Colombia where U"wa Indians have even threatened
to commit mass suicide to defend what they claim as ancestral
land rights, the country"s oil association chief
said on Friday.
Los
Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp had been due to
sink the Gibraltar-1 well, at an estimated cost of $40
million, in the first half of this year in the so-called
Samore block just outside the government-mandated limits
of the U"wa reservation.
The
block has been hailed as the country"s biggest oil
prospect, with potential crude reserves of between 2 billion
and 2.5 billion barrels. If test drills are successful
the field could ensure supplies of oil, Colombia"s
top export earner, well into the next decade. Leaders
of the 7,000-member U"wa community have so far blocked
drilling efforts with legal action and other protests,
insisting the well site encroached on much wider ancestral
lands that belonged to their semi-nomadic forebears. But
in Bogota, Alejandro Martinez, the head of the Colombian
Oil Association which represents private sector oil firms,
said: "They (Occidental) are completing civil engineering
works in order to begin drilling in Samore in September.
There were a couple of incidents, they should have begun
in June but it was delayed to September."
An
Occidental spokesman at the company"s Los Angeles
headquarters said he had no comment on when the company
would begin drilling the well. "There are some serious
issues with security," he said. "We wouldn"t
be commenting publicly to give any advance notice when
we"re going to do work. It exposes peoples lives
to danger."
Occidental
chiefs were not immediately available for comment in Colombia.
INDIANS THREATEN MASS SUICIDE TO PREVENT OIL DRILLING
In the past, the U"was have threatened to commit
mass suicide to defend their land and protect the oil
which they view as the "lifeblood of Mother Earth."
Marxist guerrillas that operate in the region and are
opposed to foreign multinational involvement in the oil
industry have also attacked construction and engineering
equipment causing further setbacks.
The
U"was have received strong backing in their fight
against Occidental from U.S.-based environmental groups.
Last year, three U.S. citizens working with the U"was
in northeast Colombia were kidnapped and murdered by Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels and their bodies
dumped across the border with neighboring Venezuela.
The
land dispute first flared in 1992 when Occidental was
granted exploration rights to the 500,000 acre (200,000
hectare) block. Last year, the government increased the
size of the U"wa reservation in a failed bid to resolve
the wrangle.
Colombia
currently produces an average 710,000 barrels per day
of crude and exported some $2.2 billion of oil in the
first half of this year. But proven reserves, which now
stand at 2.3 billion barrels, are dwindling and could
force the country to become a net oil importer again by
2005 if no major new finds are made.
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