-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
http://www.ft.com/hippocampus/q3270c6.htm
Gore attacked over Colombia oil project
By Matthew Jones
Environmentalists and human rights
activists are accusing Al Gore, the
US vice-president and candidate for
the Democratic party presidential
nomination, of hypocrisy over his
shareholding in an oil company
prospecting in Colombian rainforests.
Mr Gore has targeted the environmental and human rights
vote as part of his election campaign and was last week
rated "the most knowledgeable" presidential candidate on
green issues by the influential League of Conservation
Voters.
But the U'wa Defense Working Group, which represents the
U'wa indigenous tribe from the north east of Colombia,
says Mr Gore is inextricably linked with Occidental
Petroleum, the US oil group which plans to start
drilling on its ancestral lands in the next few months
in search of an estimated 1.5bn barrels of oil.
According to Mr Gore's official Public Financial
Disclosure Report for 1998, the latest information
available, the vice-president owned between $250,000 and
$500,000 in Occidental stock inherited from his father,
Albert Gore Sr, who died in 1998. Mr Gore Sr became a
board member of Occidental Petroleum after losing his
Senate seat in 1970.
According to the Centre for Public Integrity, a
non-profit organisation that analyses ethics in
politics, Ray Irani, the Occidental chief executive,
made a donation of $100,000 to the Democratic National
Committee in the early 90s following a stay in the
Lincoln Room of the White House.
The campaign group is urging environmentalists not to
vote for Mr Gore and to protest about his links to
Occidental on the campaign trail.
Neither the White House nor Mr Gore's campaign team has
responded to requests for comment.
Stephen Kretzmann, U'wa campaign co-ordinator for Amazon
Watch, a California-based environmental group, said:
"This will not look good for Al Gore in the midst of an
election campaign. It is clear that he could stop the
drilling with a phone call and if he doesn't do
something about this he will lose the environmental and
human rights vote."
The U'wa, who number 5,000, first hit the headlines in
1996 when they threatened to commit collective suicide
if Occidental's drilling plans were not halted.
The drill site falls 600m outside the legally recognised
U'wa Unified Reserve but the tribe claims it is within
larger, traditional ancestral territory.
The UDWG claims development of the site would be
damaging to the tribe and the environment because of the
likely increase in oil-related violence between
different armed factions in the politically unstable
region.
It says Occidental's existing pipeline has been attacked
more than 600 times in the last 12 years leading to 2.1m
barrels of crude oil spilling into the soil and rivers,
and that U'wa members and humanitarian workers have been
killed or injured in the cross-fire.
Occidental said earlier this month that it planned to
start building roads to the test site at the end of
January and would sink the first test well at the site
in May.
Ken Hufmann, Occidental's vice-president of investor
relations, refused to comment on Mr Gore's stock holding
in the company or any political donations that it had
made.
He would say only: "We're moving ahead with plans to
drill the well but I have no specific dates."
� Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2000.
.
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