Economic development and ecological conservation are once again at odds in the Amazon, where a remote region thick with rare species — and indigenous peoples in “voluntary isolation” — has been opened to extensive oil and gas development.
Environment News Service reports that Brazil’s Petrobras, the U.S. firm Barrett Resources and Spain’s Repsol have all been approved to develop vast territories in the Upper Amazon Basin, in the border regions of Peru and Ecuador.
Activists say that 73 percent of the Peruvian Amazon “is now or soon will be” open to oil development, up from 13 percent in 2004.
Source:
“Oil Developers Permitted to Penetrate Pristine Upper Amazon”
Environment News Service, December 4, 2007
One really can’t blame a nation enticed by the US to develop its oil fields. The US is the consummate capitalist at work in the world. But the Amazon is a World Heritage site worthy of the UNESCO’s World Heritage Commission to place on alert and possibly to place on their DANGER list.
This oil drilling stuff in our most beautiful and naturally breathtaking areas of the world needs to stop. How about we pay off the middle east like were doing to other countries to drill and have them use what they have instead of hoarding it to be powerful in the future. These oil industry owners and CEO’s and major stockholders have a few loose screws upstairs and need to develop some morals before they start taking the future of the planet in their own hands.