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The Campaign against Occidental Petroleum
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New Target: Oil Company's Investors |
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By Danielle Knight*
Environmentalists
boast of having pressured Fidelity Investments to sell off 60 percent
of its shares in the US-based oil company that has commenced drilling
operations in an indigenous-held area of Colombia. The investors
say the sale was unrelated to the anti-oil campaign
WASHINGTON - Having had no luck convincing
a US oil company to halt drilling on land in Colombia claimed by
an indigenous tribe, opponents to the project are now declaring
some success in targeting the corporation's investors.
Since 1992, when Occidental Petroleum was granted
drilling rights in northeast Colombia by the government, the 5,000-strong
U'wa tribe - which is against the project and claims the land as
their sacred territory - has received international support in opposing
the project.
But when condemnation from environmental and
human rights groups worldwide did not change Occidental's plans,
activists switched their focus to the largest shareholder in the
corporation, Fidelity Investments.
After a 10-month campaign by the Rainforest
Action Network, Amazon Watch, and other environmental groups, the
Boston-based firm sold more than 60 percent of its holdings in Occidental,
totaling 400 million dollars.
Even though Fidelity says that there was no
connection between its divestment and the campaign, activists are
claiming that it was a result of the impact their numerous protests
in the United States and Europe had on the investor's reputation.
''Fidelity learned the hard way that being
Oxy's business partner is hazardous to their company's image,''
says Atossa Soltani, director of Amazon Watch, a California-based
group.
While activists are still trying to get Fidelity
to divest its remaining shares in the corporation, pressure groups
are now taking aim at another Occidental shareholder, the investment
firm Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. and its parent company Alliance
Capital Management.
''We are urging Sanford Bernstein and other
major Occidental Petroleum shareholders to follow Fidelity's example
and divest from this morally bankrupt company and unethical oil
project,'' says Soltani. The firm has 53 million shares, valued
at 1.19 billion dollars, in Occidental.
Earlier this month Roberto Perez, chief of
the U'wa nation, delivered a letter to the firm demanding that it
sell its stock in the oil company.
''Occidental's drilling on our ancestral territory
runs the risk of destroying the ancient culture that we have carried
on from generation to generation,'' says the letter addressed to
Roger Hertog, Vice Chairman of Alliance Capital Management and Sanford
C. Bernstein.
''For that reason, we demand... that you divest
entirely from Occidental.''
To date, the investment firm has declined all
journalists' requests for comment.
The letter from Perez was a follow-up to the
surprise visit he led with activists from the U'wa Defense Working
Group, made up of US and European human rights and environmental
groups, to Sanford C. Bernstein's New York offices in April. They
called on the money management fund to divest from the oil company.
During the unannounced visit, Hertog said
he would investigate the issue. But since then, the firm increased
its holdings by 10 million shares to become Occidental's largest
investor.
The company began drilling for oil in November.
The tribe says that since then its homeland has become heavily militarized
because Colombia's rebel groups have tended to target oil operations.
Just north of the U'wa territory, guerrilla
attacks on an Occidental pipeline have caused 2.3 million barrels
of oil to seep into the ground, according to the state oil firm
Ecopetrol.
Perez says that unless the project is cancelled,
the U'wa will be caught in the crossfire of Colombia's decades long
civil war.
Besides increased violence in the area, the
tribe is also opposed to the drilling due to their belief that oil
is ''the blood of mother earth'' and must not be touched.
Based on a 300-year-old precedent, they have
threatened to commit mass suicide if Occidental is allowed to go
ahead with its plans. In the late 17th century, several U'wa jumped
to their deaths from a cliff to avoid coming under the authority
of a group of Spanish missionaries and tax collectors.
While the government argues that the oil project
is located outside the demarcated indigenous reserve, the U'wa say
all land within what was known as the Samore oil block - even that
not encompassed by the designated indigenous reserve - is its sacred
ancestral territory.
The U'wa and their supporters are currently
trying to halt the drilling by legally challenging the company's
license. They are basing their current case on land deeds from the
King of Spain which were uncovered in September and date back to
the 1600s. The deeds granted the tribe surface and sub-surface mineral
rights on the land they claim is their territory.
In 1873, the Colombian government claimed all
sub-surface mineral rights as property of the nation except those
previously ceded by the royal land deeds.
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