Enviros Press Gore Over Oil Company Connections

by Danielle Knight

As part of his election campaign, Gore is courting the environmental vote, touting his involvement in the negotiation of various environmental treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol and his book, "The Earth in Balance."

Yet as Gore increases his campaign activities this week in New Hampshire, members of the U'wa Defense Working Group plan to follow him with loud protests in a bid to pressure the vice president to use his influence to urge Occidental to withdraw from an oil project on territory claimed by the native U'wa people.

The 5,000-strong Native group which lives in the tropical rain forest of the Andes near the Venezuelan border, sees oil as "the blood of mother earth" and has threatened mass suicide if operations proceed.

"We'll be there to make it clear that Gore needs to utilize his influence to save the U'wa," said Stephen Kretzmann from New Hampshire, who is coordinating the U'wa Campaign for California-based Amazon Watch.

The Gore family and the Los Angeles-based company have been linked for generations. Gore's father worked for Armand Hammer, the founder of Occidental, and funds from the company and its subsidiaries eventually formed the basis of the Gore family fortune.

"You start to add up all of the connections and it's hard to believe that he doesn't have a lot of sway with the company," said Kretzmann. "We'll find out if his stated concern about the environment and human rights is stronger that his connections to big oil."

Gore's office did not return IPS's request for comment.

Environmental and human rights groups have been trying to pressure the vice president on the issue of drilling on U'wa lands for the past two years. Both the Sierra Club and the Amazon Coalition called on Gore to intervene in the situation.

Activists are also targeting one of the largest shareholders of Occidental stock, Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest mutual fund companies.

Because environmentalists significantly raised awareness of the plight of the U'wa, shareholders representing more than $800 million worth of stock voted in favor of a resolution asking Occidental to reevaluate the project, at the oil giant's annual general meeting last year.

There is a 300-year old precedent to the suicide threat. In the late 17th century, a community of U'wa jumped to their deaths from a cliff to avoid coming under the authority of a group of Spanish missionaries and tax collectors.

The drill site falls outside of the legally recognized U'wa Reserve, which was recently expanded. But the tribe claims the site is within the larger, traditional U'wa ancestral territory.

In an act of protest, about 200 members of the U'wa established a permanent settlement since November on the exact site of Occidental's first exploratory oil well, known as Gibraltar 1.

On Jan 19, thousands of members of the heavily armed Colombian military personnel surrounded the settlement.

"With this deed, Occidental and the Colombian government are insisting on ignoring our territorial rights over land we have occupied for thousands of years," said a written statement by the U'wa released on Jan 20.

The U'wa Defense Working Group says drilling near or on U'wa territory would harm the rain forest and endanger the tribe because it would likely increase oil-related violence in the region.

In the context of the country's civil war, oil facilities in Colombia have been turned into military fortresses and have been a magnet for leftist guerrillas.

Environmentalists say Occidental's Cano Limon pipeline -- located just north of claimed U'wa territory -- has been attacked by guerrillas more than 600 times in the last 13 years, spilling more than 2.1 million barrels of crude oil into the soil and rivers.

Three U.S. citizens working with the U'wa were killed last March by a unit of the country's most prominent leftist group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Occidental has refused to comment on Gore's stock holdings or any possible political contributions made to his campaign.

The company 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.