Peru: natives face American banks to warn about oil exploitation
Indigenous leaders traveled from the Peruvian Amazon to the United States this week with the aim of dissuading investors from financing the Peruvian oil company Petroperu.
REUTERS - Mariana Bazo
Text by: RFI Follow
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Indigenous leaders traveled from the Peruvian Amazon to the United States this week with the aim of dissuading investors from financing the Peruvian oil company Petroperu.
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With our correspondent in Lima,
Juliette Chaignon
Busy week for the four indigenous leaders: meetings in New York then Washington with JP Morgan, Citi Bank and Goldman Sachs.
The Vanguard investment fund refused him the meeting.
Nelton Yankur represents the Achuar people, a community in the Peruvian Amazon affected for 40 years, he says, by oil exploitation.
“
Petroperu, but also the company Talisman, have an environmental liability.
The water from the river, our water sources are no longer drinkable.
They are completely contaminated.
And the problem has still not been resolved
,” he explains.
For several months, the state group Petroperu has been trying to relaunch exploration and drilling, including in the Amazon.
An investment that requires more than a billion and a half dollars.
Indigenous leaders want to prevent this resumption of activity.
“
We want the global banks, which finance Petroperu, to stop investing.
We, the Achuar people, but also the Wampis people and other peoples.
We will never allow oil exploitation on our lands
,” assures Nelton Yankur.
Indigenous peoples also denounce an oil leak last September.
2,500 barrels spilled on their land, a disaster that had already happened in 2014.
The Petroperu company evokes, for its part, voluntary and regular damage to the Norperuano oil pipeline of the state company, one of the largest structures in the country, built four decades ago to transport oil from the Amazon region to the coast for 800 km.
► Read also: In Peru, an indigenous group detains a group of tourists after an oil leak
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Peru
Oil
Environment
Climate