Groups say Peru oil project threatens Amazon Indian groups

The development of a remote oil field in Peru’s Amazon jungle could threaten the survival of isolated Indian communities in the region, an Indian rights group said during January.

During January, Peru’s Finance Ministry approved plans submitted by Anglo-French oil company Perenco SA to invest $1 billion over the next three years to extract crude from an oil field in the northern province of Loreto near Ecuador’s border.

An international tribal-support organization and local Indian rights groups say the oil field is the ancestral home of up to three nomadic Indian communities – the Huaorani, the Pananujuri and the Aushiri – living in voluntary isolation.

“If Perenco works in the area, it could lead to more than half of the uncontacted Indians being wiped out,” said Stephen Corry, director of the London-based tribal-support organization Survival International.