March 16, 2001
Gorman Digs Under the Surface of Plan Colombia and is...
Finding Oil Below
WHAT IT MIGHT REALLY BE ALL ABOUT
By Peter Gorman
IQUITOS, PERU-Though the stated objectives of Plan Colombia are to end the
30-plus year old civil war that has cost the lives of more than 35,000
Colombians and to end the production of cocaine and heroin, there may
be a simpler reality: oil.
There have long been rumors that somewhere between the vast oilfields of
Venezuela and the third-rate shale-oil fields of the Peruvian Amazon's
northwest there might lie the motherload of South America's oil.
Recently, geologists have been targeting those rumors to the southeastern
foothills of Colombia's Andes. While it is only a rumor at this
time-because those scientists passing it not yet willing to put their names
on the record-if true, then Plan Colombia has an even more wretched face
than previously thought. Could it be possible that Plan Colombia is simply
a cover for eliminating the people in the region who stand between the oil
exploration and the potential riches it would produce?
Of course, that idea begs this question: if we already know there are
unimaginably rich oil fields in the region, why not simply move in as
businessmen and purchase the rights? The answer, if such oil fields exist,
is twofold: first, Colombia is in the midst of a civil war and US oil
companies are already having tremendous difficulty maintaining qualified
men there because of how dangerous the job has become. US oil companies in
Colombia are currently paying a premium of $1,000 a day to men who, in
other countries for the same work, are earning $200 or less per day. And
they are still short men willing to risk their lives in the ongoing civil
war. Exploring for oil in the heart of rebel-held territory would simply be
impossible in the present political climate.
There is also the question of public relations. Several indigenous peoples
live in the region in question, including the Cofan tribal group, and
drilling for oil in traditional indigenous territory has already proven to
be a political and public relations nightmare in South America, one which
has cost companies years of work and millions and millions of dollars in
legal battles, most recently in Waorani territory in Ecuador.
If, however, those traditional peoples, as well as the FARC, were moved
from the region because of war, they would largely lose their claims to the
"traditional territory." Imagine the FARC and locals in the region
slaughtered or displaced in a US-backed war, after which US oil companies
quickly move into the now-vacated territory and discover terribly rich
oilfields. Rather than being a public relations debacle for the oil
companies they would appear as proverbial White Knights rushing in to help
rebuild a decimated land.
If such fields exist, it is not difficult to imagine the possibility of
someone or several people in the US State Department knowing of them, and
subsequently pushing for the passage of Plan Colombia under the guise of
fighting the War on Drugs. As noted, to date the existence of the oil
motherload is just a rumor, but it would explain why the US position went
from one of having no interest in Colombia's civil war-even at the height
of the cocaine epidemic in the US-to the billion-dollar-plus Plan Colombia
with all of its war components, after the FARC agreed to peace talks. It
would also explain why those war components of Plan Colombia are nearly all
aimed at the FARC demilitarized zone and not at the paramilitary (AUC) held
regions, which are the primary sources of finished cocaine and the
exclusive regions of distribution and export of same.
"...all truly great scientific abstractions are both universal and simple.
They are simple not because they explain so little but because they explain
so much. Generality does not arise because an abstraction represents
everything that could possibly happen, but because it remains valid no
matter what happens."
Alan Freeman
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