Occidental Agrees to Scrap Plan to Drill Disputed Land

Occidental Petroleum Corp. reportedly has agreed to abandon plans to drill for oil in the disputed Colombian homeland of a semi-nomadic tribe that threatens mass suicide if oil exploration goes forward.

In a deal brokered by the Colombian Ministry of Mines that is expected to be announced today, the Los Angeles-based oil giant will give up its exploration rights in the territory claimed by the U’wa people, a 5,000-member tribe that has vowed to jump off a 1,400-foot cliff if oil is extracted from its ancestral lands.

Oxy is expected to be granted a smaller tract of land under more favorable profit terms in another part of the oil-rich section of Colombia known as the Samore block, according to El Tiempo newspaper in Bogota.

An Occidental spokesman in Los Angeles said the company does not comment on rumors and speculation.

The proposed agreement could rid Oxy of a situation that was, at best, a nagging public relations headache.

U’wa leaders could not be reached for comment. Grand Council President Roberto Cobaria was said to be on an airplane and unreachable. But a spokesman for one of their numerous U.S. supporters, the Berkeley environmental group Project Underground, said the U’wa were not consulted about any agreement.

“No one with authority has talked to the U’wa directly about what this means to them,” said spokesman Steve Kretzmann.

The U’wa and Occidental do not agree on the boundaries of the U’wa ancestral lands. Occidental has said its original drilling plans fall outside the U’wa reservation. But the U’wa, based on recent mapping, consider all of the Samore block to be within their broad ancestral lands.

“We don’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing,” Kretzmann said. “The U’wa are reserving comment until they see what the swap is, and they want to consult with their elders.”

The U’wa religion holds that oil is “the blood of Mother Earth,” according to a message to Oxy shareholders published in a full-page advertisement in the New York Times in April. “To take its oil is, for us, worse than killing your own mother. If you kill the Earth, then no one will live.”

Occidental was granted the right in 1992 to drill in the Samore block by the Colombian government. The company has invested more than $12 million in the site but has yet to drill any wells.