Colombia Aims to End Oil Companies, Indians Standoff

BOGOTA--Top government officials will meet Friday with some 300 U'wa Indians in Colombia's remote northeastern cloud forests near the Venezuelan border in the hopes of ending a standoff that has caused a month-long shutdown of the country's second-longest oil pipeline and forced two major oil companies to cancel contracts to sell oil.

The 480-mile Cano Limon pipeline, which normally carries 72,000 barrels of oil a day to the coast for export and is used by Colombian state run oil firm Ecopetrol and Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, has been shut since March 25 when military officials said leftist rebels blew up a section of the line that runs inside the territory of the U'wa Indians.

Dynamite attacks on pipelines by Marxist guerrilla groups that oppose exploitation of Colombia's resources by foreign multinationals is common--259 were blown up last year--and the Cano Limon pipeline is the rebels' favorite target in the oil-producing nation.

Most rebel attacks on the Cano Limon are repaired within a few days by specialists from Ecopetrol, which then allows pumping to resume quickly and causes only a slight decline in production levels from the Cano Limon field shared by Occidental and Ecopetrol. But following last month's attack, which spilled oil onto the U'wa land, tribal members refused to allow repair crews reach the damaged site.

"The government (Ecopetrol) wanted to do what they always do after the rebels attack, they wanted to fix the pipeline and then maybe later clean up some of the spilled oil," Aura Tegria, an U'wa spokeswoman, said Thursday by telephone. "Well, it's not going to happen that way anymore, and that's why we're not allowing in the repairmen."

Representatives at Occidental said they had no comment.

Ms. Tegria said approximately 30 or 40 U'wa members were blocking the damaged stretch of the pipeline, but said none was armed or acting in a threatening manner.

The costs to the forced shutdown are rising. Colombia is Latin America's fourth-largest oil producer and oil is the government's main source of foreign revenue. The country produces about 1 million barrels a day of oil, so the monthlong shutdown in production at the Cano Limon field means a 7% drop in overall output. Because of the area's remoteness and lack of good highways, the Cano Limon field relies on its pipeline and can't resort to oil tanker trucks when the pipeline is shut.

"We've obviously had many temporary shutdowns to pipelines or fields due to rebel attacks, but they usually only last a few days," an Ecopetrol spokesman said. "But this is now nearly a month that Cano Limon, both the pipeline and the field, are shut, and that's the longest I can remember in many years."

Losses already exceed $136 million, the spokesman said, due to a drop in royalty payments, oil sales and other problems. He said 500 temporary workers at the oil field have been laid off since they have no work to do.

The Ecopetrol spokesman said Colombia's ministers of mines and energy as well as the ministers of the interior and environment and the president of Ecopetrol are all scheduled to attend Thursday's meeting in an effort to convince the U'wa to let them pass and repair the pipeline.

The U'was requested President Juan Manuel Santos also attend, but officials from Ecopetrol said the president's office informed them he won't be able to make it. Mr. Santos is in the middle of a re-election campaign for a second four-year term in office. Voting is May 25 and Mr. Santos is the favorite, though the race is getting closer.

The U'wa, Colombia's third-largest indigenous group with some 7,000 members, is no stranger to controversy. The group, which sits on land that for decades was thought to be holding more than a billion barrels of oil, considers petroleum sacred, calling it "the blood of Mother Earth." In the 1990s the U'wa threatened mass suicide if Occidental went ahead with plans to drill on the Indians' land.

Ms. Tegria, the U'wa spokeswoman, said one of many of the group's demands tomorrow is that Ecopetrol and the government remove the section of pipeline that runs along their land. Ecopetrol officials said that would be impossible, but that they are willing to discuss all proposals.

Write to Dan Molinski at [e-mail]

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires