WWW.DEMOCRACY.ORG reports that two banks funded by US taxpayer dollars will soon decide whether to go ahead with the Camisea gas project in Peru. Indigenous groups and environmental activists call the project destructive and financially unstable. The board of the Inter-American Development Bank is to vote on whether to go ahead with a loan to finance the project; the US Export Import Bank together with the IDB could provide $300 million in loans to pave the way for financing the $1.6-billion project. The main beneficiaries of the project are two Texas oil companies, Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of US vice-president Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, and Hunt Oil Co, whose vice president was a top energy advisor to George Bush.
Halliburton is said to be lined up to get the billion-dollar contract for a coastline processing facility, and Hunt Oil is a primary partner in the consortium of oil companies building the pipeline. However, two major investors in the Camisea project, Citigroup and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, have already pulled out, citing environmental and financial concerns.
A consultant’s report for the Export Import Bank, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, reveals that the project violates the bank’s standards and that the environmental assessments are “woefully inadequate”. The US Agency for International Development issued a statement opposing the project, and more than a dozen senators, led by Patrick Leahy of Vermont, wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow urging that the project be put on hold unless fundamental changes were made and environmental damage is reversed.