Mem­bers of the Achuar indige­nous peo­ple in the north­ern Peru­vian Ama­zon have been protest­ing against Peru’s state oil company’s plans to enter their ter­ri­to­ry and exploit an esti­mat­ed 42 mil­lion bar­rels of light oil.

A protest was held against Petrope­ru last month in an Achuar com­mu­ni­ty called Wisum near the bor­der with Ecuador, just 12 days after it was con­firmed the com­pa­ny would take over oper­a­tions in a con­ces­sion called “Lot 64.”

Petroperu’s involve­ment in this region fol­lows the deci­sion announced last Sep­tem­ber by Cana­di­an com­pa­ny Tal­is­man to with­draw from “Lot 64″, after dis­cov­er­ing oil but meet­ing oppo­si­tion from Achuar liv­ing with­in the con­ces­sion.

The recent protest could be con­sid­ered extreme­ly embar­rass­ing for Petrope­ru since its acqui­si­tion of “Lot 64″ con­sti­tutes a return to upstream oper­a­tions after a break of 17 years, accord­ing to Lima-based news­pa­per La Repub­li­ca, which called the move “his­toric.”

The protest was held on Wisum’s land­ing strip and involved men, women and chil­dren from more than 20 Achuar com­mu­ni­ties, some of whom held signs read­ing “We reject Petrope­ru” and “No Petrope­ru: no to the sale of our Achuar ter­ri­to­ry.”

A state­ment by the Peru­vian Fed­er­a­tion of Achuar Nation­al­i­ties (FENAP) reads:

Petrope­ru should not oper­ate in Lot 64. As the own­ers of our ter­ri­to­ry, we are opposed to oil activ­i­ties. We are inform­ing the Peru­vian state that the posi­tion of the Achuar peo­ple in the Pas­taza region has not changed since the cre­ation, with­out con­sul­ta­tion, of Lot 64 in 1995. We will con­tin­ue active­ly resist­ing any kind of oil oper­a­tion on our ances­tral ter­ri­to­ry which cov­ers the large major­i­ty of the con­ces­sion.

That fol­lowed a state­ment by anoth­er Achuar orga­ni­za­tion, Achuar­ti Irun­tramo (ATI), which is based in Wisum and affil­i­at­ed to FENAP, addressed to Peru’s pres­i­dent Ollan­ta Humala, Petrope­ru, var­i­ous min­istries and Con­gress express­ing “our rejec­tion of any kind of entrance of oil com­pa­nies, even Petrope­ru, in the Achuar people’s ances­tral ter­ri­to­ry”:

We’re aware of the Supreme Decree trans­fer­ring Lot 64 from Tal­is­man to Petrope­ru. We don’t want anoth­er buy­er, even if it’s Petrope­ru. Ever since the cre­ation of the con­ces­sion in 1995, we have opposed all the com­pa­nies here, begin­ning with Arco, then Occi­den­tal and most recent­ly Tal­is­man. Like we did for all of those, we will make it impos­si­ble for Petrope­ru to enter.

Both state­ments express con­cerns about the poten­tial social and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of oil oper­a­tions.

“We’ve seen that the Riv­er Cor­ri­entes is very con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and know that Lot 1‑AB has been declared a Zone of Envi­ron­men­tal Emer­gency after years of com­plaints from our Achuar and Quechua broth­ers,” states FENAP, refer­ring to a near­by oil con­ces­sion. “We don’t want his­to­ry to be repeat­ed and so we don’t want any more com­pa­nies com­ing here – whether nation­al or inter­na­tion­al ones.”

“Our protest has many mean­ings,” says FENAP’s pres­i­dent, Peas Peas Ayui, speak­ing from San Loren­zo in the Ama­zon where FENAP has an office. “We’re not going to let any com­pa­ny enter. We are the own­ers. We are the orig­i­nal inhab­i­tants. We want to live in peace. We have the right to stand up for our­selves and if Petrope­ru tries to enter we will fight very hard against it.”

How­ev­er, accord­ing to Petroperu’s Juan José Bete­ta Her­rera, the com­pa­ny will start oper­at­ing as soon as it has met the envi­ron­men­tal require­ments stip­u­lat­ed by Peru­vian law, which will include prepar­ing an “Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment” of its planned oper­a­tions.

“This will pro­vide light crude for Petroperu’s refiner­ies in Talara and Iqui­tos and return the com­pa­ny to upstream activ­i­ties, which forms part of our strat­e­gy,” he says. “At the same time, it will bring social ben­e­fits to the com­mu­ni­ties cur­rent­ly involved in the area.”

Asked how Petrope­ru will respond to the Achuar’s protest, Bete­ta Her­rera says the com­pa­ny will “con­tin­ue with the com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions pol­i­cy it has been imple­ment­ing for the last 40 years along the route of the North Peru­vian Pipeline.”

“Part of that pol­i­cy is to main­tain con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the com­mu­ni­ties in the areas of our oper­a­tions,” he says.

But Peas Peas Ayui says he has heard noth­ing from Petrope­ru since the protest in Wisum, and ATI’s recent state­ment claims the pipeline – an exten­sion of which pass­es through “Lot 64″ – is con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing their ter­ri­to­ry and threat­en­ing fish stocks.

US-based NGO Ama­zon Watch’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Atossa Soltani says:

As a cor­ner­stone of their strat­e­gy to strength­en Petrope­ru, Peru’s gov­ern­ment has cho­sen Block 64 as a pilot project to show­case the company’s poten­tial. But the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the block is ter­ri­to­ry of Achuar com­mu­ni­ties that have repeat­ed­ly reject­ed any oil activ­i­ty and have effec­tive­ly expelled mul­ti­ple transna­tion­al com­pa­nies since 1995. How does Petrope­ru think they are going to be suc­cess­ful where Arco, Oxy, and final­ly Tal­is­man have failed?

Hav­ing announced its dis­cov­ery of oil in “Lot 64″ in ear­ly 2006, Tal­is­man revealed it was pulling out on 12 Sep­tem­ber last year. Ama­zon Watch described it as a “major vic­to­ry for indige­nous rights” fol­low­ing “increased pres­sure by human rights groups and share­hold­ers for oper­at­ing with­out Achuar con­sent.”

But Talisman’s Phoebe Buck­land calls it a “busi­ness deci­sion.”

“Peru was part of our explo­ration port­fo­lio and we have sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced the explo­ration bud­get to focus on oppor­tu­ni­ties near our core areas,” she says now. “We are cur­rent­ly wind­ing down oper­a­tions in Peru.”