Impact on people and wildlife
Indigenous communities in the region also hunt many of these animals. In Loreto alone there are 500 indigenous territories and five reserves for people in voluntary isolation who have rejected any outside contact. “It is now very likely that they have no fish nor land animals for food, nor fresh water to drink,” Mori says.
In official statements PETROPERÚ claimed having sent trained personnel to control the contingency and hired indigenous people to assist in the remediation. Some of them have already started to get sick. Montenegro indicated that the number of people with headaches, vomiting, diarrhea and rashes has increased. Peru’s Social Health Insurance also mobilized doctors and nurses to the district of Imaza, one of the affected areas, in response to the cases of allergic dermatitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis and gastroenteritis that have been reported following work on the containment and collection of the oil spill.
Risk in protected areas
Although the Supervisory Agency of the Investment in Energy and Mining of Peru has not yet taken action against PETROPERÚ for the recent spills, on February 18 it fined the company $3.6 million “for not having adjusted the facilities to maintain the integrity of the pipeline.”
For several specialists, this measure confirms that the cause of the spill could be a lack of the maintenance facilities and no ground displacement, as PETROPERÚ stated. “The infrastructure [of the pipeline] was designed to last from 20 to 30 years, not 40 or 50," notes Bill Powers, chief engineer of E-Tech International, a U.S.-based environmental consulting firm, who has analyzed extraction practices in Peru for years. “The main issue is that the pipeline is old and deteriorated, the landscape through which it runs is almost inaccessible and monitoring and repair tasks are not a priority—there will be more spills.”
But Jenkins is not so fatalistic. “We have the technology to prevent most of these [spills],” he says. The opportunity to do so could be close now that oil prices have fallen and the industry has entered a temporary pause. “It’s time to do a better job and develop better policies before prices rise again,” he concludes.
