From: cls@truffula.sj.ca.us (Cameron L. Spitzer)
Subject: Rainforest Action Network's Alert #74
Organization: Save the Humans!
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 15:31:11 GMT


Hi Folks!

Here's Rainforest Action Network's Action Alert #74.
You can help save one of the world's greatest tropical rainforests and one
of the last truly native cultures, with a few minutes of your time and a
stamp.  Try it!  You'll be glad you did.



                Maxus Oil Road Reaches Huaorani Territory


In June, officials of the Organization of the Huaorani Nationality (ONHAE)
contacted RAN to express their fear that Maxus Energy Corporation of Dallas,
Texas will soon enter their territory.  Last October, Maxus  took over
controlling interest in  the Block 16 and 22 oil concessions when the Conoco
Corporation [a DuPont subsidiary] pulled out.  Maxus has announced that the
Bogi I well, located within Huaorani traditional territory, will be operating
before the end of the year and they plan to build two airstrips on Huaorani
land.

ONHAE informs us that Maxus has completed another five kilometers of the oil
road from Coca into Block 16 of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and that the road
construction has halted at the border of Huaorani traditional territory.
Maxus officially denies having started the road, but does claim that they plan
to begin construction by the middle of July.

The road into Block 16 will be 100 miles long and cost over $22 million to
construct.  It will connect five to seven of the exploratory wells dug by
Conoco and facilitate the construction and maintenance of the pipeline.  Maxus
plans ten to twelve drilling platforms along the route, each servicing ten to
twelve horizontal (slanting) wells.

In their letter to RAN, ONHAE states "we do not want Maxus to enter until we
can be absolutely sure that our health and the environment will not be
adversely affected."  The Huaorani inform us that none of their communities
want the road built because it will "divide" their territory and inevitably
lead to an invasion of colonists.

The Huaorani also write that a group of oil company employees were traveling
in Yasuni National Park when they encountered a group of as yet unencountered
Huaorani Indians, known as the Taromenane, who threatened them with spears.
ONHAE demands that these people, along with two other uncontacted groups
living in Block 16 and 22, be left completely alone until they decide to make
contact with the outside world.

The oil road being built will dissect the traditional living, hunting, and
gathering lands of at least five of the Huaorani tribal groups.  The Huaorani
Indians are one of the last nomadic agriculturalist and hunter/gatherer groups
in the world.  They have already suffered serious social disruption, water and
soil contamination and species degradation from oil development and the
subsequent colonization within their traditional territory.  Such
colonization, inevitably increased when a new road is built, presents the
greatest threat to the Huaorani and the environment.

Block 16 and the adjacent Block 22 comprise 900,000 acres of pristine
rainforest located in the headwaters of the Amazon Basin.  Due to the fact
that this was one of the world's "pockets of life" during the Pleistocene Ice
Age, the region contains some of the highest numbers of plant and animal
species found anywhere on Earth.  The extremely high biodiversity of this
region feeds the entire Amazon Basin.


                               WHAT YOU CAN DO

Write to Maxus urging them to stop building the oil road into Block 16 until:

1.  A comprehensive environmental management plan is presented by Maxus which
includes all of their plans in Huaorani territory (including Block 22) and
this is approved by ONHAE.

2.  An independent environmental impact statement, assessing the cumulative
impacts of oil development on the Huaorani, is completed and made public.

Address your letter to:
     Charles L. Blackburn, Chairman, President, and CEO
     Maxus Energy Corporation
     717 North Harwood ST
     Dallas, TX 75201-6594
Tel (214)953-2000

[RAN's reports on this kind of thing have proven uncannily timely and
accurate.  We also have a pretty good track record of getting companies and
governments to destroy less rainforest.  Please take a few minutes to write
the letter.  This is how we preserve the human habitat: one project at a time.
It works.  -CS]

Keyed to disk and posted by Cameron Spitzer, aka cls@truffula.sj.ca.us
By permission of Rainforest Action Network, 450 Sansome, STE 700,
San Francisco, CA 94111

Newsgroups: alt.save.the.earth