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Gas From the Rain Forest
A Machiguenga Indian child holds a parrot in Timpia, one of the communities directly affected by the pipeline.
(By Antoine Bonsorte -- Amazon Watch)
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The Peruvian energy regulatory authority has so far imposed five fines totaling $2.8 million on Transportadora de Gas del Peru, the Argentine company that operates the pipeline, though the company has so far not paid any of them.
The company has, however, sent food to several affected communities and is building fish farms to compensate for their losses due to river pollution. It has also adopted a $25 million plan to reduce the risk of more spills.
A California-based nonprofit engineering consultancy, E-Tech International, hired by the environmental coalition issued a report in February alleging that the first four leaks were the result of poor quality pipes, shoddy workmanship and inadequate soil stabilization under parts of the pipeline. It warned of "a high potential for future ruptures" at half a dozen other locations.
The Argentine builder has denied the allegations but launched its own new inspection of the pipeline, while Peru's Congress has ordered a full-scale investigation into the causes of the leaks.
Robert Montgomery, who heads the environmental unit in the Inter-American bank's private sector department, said that "most" of the new pipelines recently built in Latin America had not experienced similar problems but that the Peru line was "somewhat unique" because it was built along mountain ridges to avoid populated areas.
At a February meeting at the bank's District headquarters, the president of the Argentine pipeline operator, Ricardo Markous, blamed the spills on heavy rainfall and landslides and said all the pipe was brand new and built specifically for the Peru project. On March 10, the company issued a 100-page point-by-point rebuttal of the E-Tech report, including documents tracking the history of the 188,000 tons of pipe used in the project.
But the report also pointed out that the complicated geography of the pipeline route made it "impossible to assure that there will not occur any incidents that might affect the system."
Staff researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
