Pipeline Politics- Nine Controversial Pipeline Projects

Pipeline Politics- Nine Controversial Pipeline Projects
An article from The WorldPaper produced with help from Project
Underground...
info@worldtimes.com

Intravenous Earth
The map plots the vast and the vaunted-from Saudi Arabia's oil fields to
Nova Scotia's natural-gas
reserves-against the diffuse and the disempowered-the world's indigenous
peoples and ethnolinguistic groups.
That the two should overlap is a dilemma for traditional peoples and those
fearing harm to ecological reserves. With an eye on threatened peoples and
environmental damage from oil exploitation, researchers at Project
Underground,a Berkeley watchdog group (moles.org), monitor the tapping of
intravenous Earth and the impacts from piping petroleum long before it
reaches the world's factories and fueling stations.

BRAZIL AND BOLIVIA

At a cost of $2 billion, the Bolivia-Brazil pipeline is one of the single
largest private-sector investment in Latin America. Total length of the
pipeline will be 3,000 kilometers. The main portion of from Santa Cruz to
Puerto Suarez already completed over a year ago. It already traverses the
Pantanal wetlands of Bolivia and Brazil and is heading for the Chaco and
subtropical  forests of Bolivia, and the threatened Brazilian Atlantic
forests in the states of Santa Catarina and São Paulo. On the Bolivian side,
Shell and Enron own nearly 80 percent of the pipeline through their 35
percent holding in Gastransboliviano and their mostly joint ownership of
Transredes, which holds the other 51 percent of the pipeline. In 1997, The
World Bank and the  Inter-American Development Bank approved $550 million in
loans to Petrobas, which is also part of the Transredes consortium and is
the principal owner of the Brazilian portion of pipeline. Indigenous
populations and pristine ecosystems will most be impacted. According to
environmental groups, the Bank has not instituted effective accountability
measures to control impacts.
When construction began in 1998, approximately 1,000 construction workers
overwhelmed the community of El Carmen. The pipeline was built within 600
meters of the local school, and was accompanied by illegal logging, the
construction of new access  roads into the forest and misconduct by
construction workers, including sexual abuse of local women. The Rio San
Miguel-Cuiaba arm of the pipeline, also sponsored mainly by Transredes, will
split off the main pipeline not too far from Santa Cruz. It cuts 630
kilometers northeast to Cuiaba, Brazil.
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Yours in struggle,
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