Oil Companies Buying an Army To Ward Off Rebels in Colombia

Publicado: 1996-08-22   Clicks: 2626

Oil Companies Buying an Army To Ward Off Rebels in Colombia

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/22/world/oil-companies-buying-an-army-to-ward-off-rebels-in-colombia.html?pagewanted=all

 

By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
Published: August 22, 1996

      YOPAL, Colombia— Emboldened by the political disarray in Colombia, guerrilla factions have been increasing their attacks against oil exploration and production sites, leading foreign oil companies operating here to begin directly paying the Colombian military to deploy its best-trained officers and soldiers for protection.
     British Petroleum Exploration, which has discovered the country's largest oil reserves, estimated at three billion barrels, near this town in eastern Colombia, has just signed a three-year agreement with the Defense Ministry valued at $54 million to $60 million to create a battalion of 150 officers and 500 soldiers to protect expansion and construction of sprawling production sites.
      The battalion will include an elite mobile unit trained for swift action to monitor construction of a 550-mile pipeline to deliver oil to the Caribbean coast for export to the United States. Last year, company officials said, British Petroleum spent $8 million on development projects along the existing pipeline, as a way to buy local good will and stave off attacks by leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army.
     Other companies are also negotiating new, more expansive agreements for protection. Oxy Colombia, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum of Bakersfield, Calif., is creating two platoons totaling 80 soldiers to bolster security at Cano Limon, from which it pumps some 200,000 barrels of oil a day to the coast. The company expects its bill for military and police protection will increase to $7 million next year from $3.9 million this year.
       ''It's the privatization of the Colombian Army,'' said Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University who has studied the guerrilla presence in Colombia. Increasingly, foreign companies are being forced to assume the responsibilities of the Government -- financing development and security, including ''buying themselves whole military platoons,'' he said.
        The new trend underscores the increasing independence of the military in a period of deep political instability in Colombia. President Ernesto Samper, though cleared of accusations that drug dealers financed his 1994 election, has been under fire for most of his administration. Backroom whispers of a military coup became public this week, when Myles Frechette, the American Ambassador, announced on Colombian television that a group of civilians had approached him last summer to test the potential United States reaction to a coup, which he said he rejected.
       The stakes are high for the guerrillas -- who military intelligence experts estimate collect $140 million a year from oil companies -- and for Colombia, South America's fourth largest oil exporting country. The British Petroleum discovery should double Colombia's production to 890,000 barrels a day by 1998 from 450,000 last year. By the end of the century, British Petroleum is expecting to pump one million barrels of crude oil a day from reserves in Cusiana and Cupiagua.
        Even before the spate of attacks this year, the lack of security in large patches of the country had been costing foreign companies dearly. A special war tax, initially introduced as a one-time expense in 1992, still remains in force, and cost the industry $250 million last year, though Defense Ministry officials said the money never reached them.
        The companies, which operate under joint ownership with Ecopetrol, the Colombian state petroleum company, pay 20 percent of their production in royalties to localities, and typically pay millions in logistical and other support for the military assigned to protect their installations.
       Along with Putumayo, near the border with Ecuador, Cano Limon has been among the hardest-hit regions. Until the British Petroleum discovery of reserves near Yopal in 1993, it represented the richest oil reserves in Colombia. The site, owned jointly by Oxy Colombia, Shell and Ecopetrol, has long been wracked with violence, averaging one pipeline attack every eight days.
       But in recent months, the attacks have grown more fierce and frequent. In May, a bus taking workers from Arauca to Cano Limon was forced to stop by masked gunmen, who ordered the workers to lie face-down in the dirt while the guerrillas, from the leftist National Liberation Army, tossed leaflets over the aisles and seats.
       The gunmen identified two security guards from among the passengers, who the leaflets asserted were lackeys of the foreign companies. The rest were ordered back on the bus. As it pulled away, two shots announced that the men had been killed.
        The next day, five guards quit their jobs, and the rest refused to ride the bus. The company sent a helicopter for them, but a union representative intimidated them by taking down the names of those who boarded, a guard said. The next day, three more guards quit and nobody boarded the helicopter.
        In April, guerrillas ambushed a military transport near here, killing six soldiers and a lieutenant. Last month they shot up a bus at Panama de Arauca, killing three people; afterward, they apologized, saying they thought the passengers were soldiers. They also blew up a wellhead less than a mile from the company offices -- the closest attack ever to the heart of Cano Limon's operations, and last week, they ambushed another five soldiers and a lieutenant.
        ''The guerrillas are trying to tell us something,'' a worker said. ''It's like they're gaining little by little. We are losing control day by day.''
        While oil companies complain that the many attacks against them highlight the lack of security, even with special military and police protection, Colombian military intelligence experts blame the companies themselves for the attacks. They contend that the companies surrender to extortion and to guerrilla infiltration through their subcontractors, essentially financing guerrilla activities in the troubled areas and fueling the cycle of extortion, kidnapping and violence.
      Maj. Luis A. Villamarin Pulido, author of several books on Colombian guerrillas, said the guerrilla attacks plague the oil industry from the beginning of exploration to production to the long journey of the oil to the coast.
      The guerrillas, he said, begin by demanding quotas of workers in the exploration phase. They may threaten kidnappings or pipeline explosions unless they are paid off in advance, or blow up the pipelines and then collect money from the companies hired to repair the damage. In the last decade, some 1.4 million barrels of crude oil have spilled because of pipeline sabotage.
      Despite the environmental damage, the attacks make the guerrillas more popular with local residents, who, instead of earning a dollar a day as farmhands, may pick up $10 repairing the pipeline.

      Officially, the companies deny financing the guerrillas. ''Everybody believes that the oil companies pay off the guerrillas, but that doesn't make sense,'' said Alejandro Martinez, president of the Colombian Oil Association. ''Oil is a long-term investment. If the company from the start accepts paying blackmail, they would be accepting it for 25 to 30 years.''
      Nevertheless, oil company officials acknowledge that guerrillas may have infiltrated the workers' union and may control many local politicians, who periodically present proposals for local development to the foreign companies. They suspect that the guerrillas extort money from subcontractors.
       ''In short, everybody pays, and they pay a lot,'' said Jesus Enrique La Rotta Mendoza, a specialist in military intelligence and author of ''The Finances of Colombian Subversion.''
     A retired oil company executive said: ''If you're not threatened by the guerrillas, it's by common delinquents, or by the authorities. Many times the companies prefer to pay them off. To denounce is to die.''
     Other than to confirm its existence, officials at British Petroleum declined to discuss the details of their agreement for protection with the Defense Ministry. But the agreement, which covers salaries and some supplies for a battalion, appears to run counter to a court ruling this year, which declared unconstitutional the private hiring of police officers on vacation, or of military personnel under special permission.
     ''The public police service is intimately tied to internal public order, and can only be the responsibility of the state, in order to guarantee its impartiality,'' the Constitutional Court ruled in January. ''It is intolerable for the legislature to establish categories of people who benefit from the essential services of the police to a special degree, according to their capacity to pay for a service that by its nature must be free.''
      Officials at British Petroleum deny that the contract with the Defense Ministry violates the court ruling, and so far the agreement has not been challenged in court.
      In addition, with rumors of a possible military coup to end Colombia's domestic political turmoil circulating for much of this year, the military appears to be enjoying greater leverage in dictating the conditions of its service.
    'You've got high taxes, low security and an unstable Government,'' said an oil company executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ''You've got yourself a time bomb.''
      Many oil companies -- which have been steadily paying for housing, medical, food and logistical support for the military assigned to protect them -- are now finding their security needs heightened with the increasing attacks.
      They fear that the best-trained soldiers, who are being earmarked for the new British Petroleum battalion, will deplete the quality of their own protection from the military, and complain that the cost of security has been inflated by the arrangement signed by B.P.
      While oil company executives complain about the lack of basic security that essentially forces them to pay for military protection, Professor Gamarra contends that they may find themselves backed into an even tighter political corner with the new arrangements.
      ''I think a lot of people are going to be upset when you have B.P.'s army killing guerrillas, killing Colombians,'' Mr. Gamarra said. ''Take this to its extreme form, and you can say: 'These soldiers are B.P.'s mercenaries. Who do they owe allegiance to -- B.P. or the Colombian state?' ''
       Photo: An employee of the Colombian state oil company, Ecopetrol, watches as a tongue of fire from a ruptured pipeline burns in Puerto Asis. Leftist guerrillas have stepped up their attacks on oil sites, and many foreign companies have begun paying the Colombian military directly for special protection. (Reuters)(pg. A16) Chart/Map: ''A CLOSER LOOK: Protecting Colombia's Pipelines'' Foreign oil companies in Colombia have been directly paying the country's military for protection against increasing guerilla attacks on oil processing sites and pipelines. Chart lists the top oil producers in Latin America. Map shows locations of oil pipelines in Colombia. (Source: Energy Information Administration; British Petroleum)(pg. A16)
 

Reciba gratis noticias, articulos y entrevistas

* indicates required

Maintained and Created by: { lv10 }

LuisVillamarin.com, 2015©