New California Media, CA
April 22 2005

Colombia vs. Venezuela: Big Oil Turns Up Heat in Border Region

Pacific News Service, News Analysis,
Bill Weinberg, Apr 22, 2005

Editor’s Note: Longtime U.S. involvement in Colombia may be
transforming and expanding from a “war on drugs” into a Washington-led,
oil-company fueled destabilization campaign against Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez.

“Oilmen are like cats; you can never tell from the sound of them
whether they are fighting or making love,” said the famous Armenian
entrepreneur Calouste Gulbenkian, as oil companies and Western
governments at a post-World War I summit in Ostend, Belgium, carved
up oil rights in Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

Now, even as world attention is riveted on Iraq, military and oil
company agendas seem to be converging in South America’s Orinoco
Basin, which holds the greatest proven reserves outside the Persian
Gulf. The region is split by the border between Colombia, Washington’s
closest South American ally, and Venezuela, ruled by a left-populist
government sharply at odds with the White House.

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez would do well to heed Gulbenkian’s
warning. Chavez has just entered into an agreement with ChevronTexaco
for a natural gas project that will span the Colombian border.

The Colombian oil heartland of Arauca is one the country’s most
violent regions. It lies just across the Rio Arauca from Venezuela’s
own Orinoco Basin oil heartland.

Arauca’s main oil field is Caño-Limon, run by California-based
Occidental Petroleum. Many of the 800 U.S. military advisers in
Colombia are assigned to Arauca, where they oversee a new Colombian
anti-guerilla army unit especially created to police Caño-Limon. This
project, for which Occidental lobbied heavily, markedly departs from
the U.S. policy of only assisting “narcotics enforcement” in Colombia.

Some fear the oil field could become a base for aggression against
Venezuela. Oscar Cañas, adviser to Colombia’s Central Workers Union,
told Venezuelan journalist Alfredo Carquez, “They are transforming
the Caño-Limon facilities into a small military fort.” Claiming U.S.
advisers and surveillance planes are now based there, Cañas notes
Caño-Limon’s proximity to the border and reports of Colombian
paramilitary attacks on the Venezuelan side. “Who is to guarantee
that all this is not being used against Venezuela?” he asks.

Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, after
Israel and Egypt, and U.S. training of Colombian military personnel
is rapidly escalating. Meanwhile, Washington is launching a major
propaganda push against Venezuela.

A March statement from the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs (JINSA), “South America — the Next Swamp?” warns that even as
the United States is “draining the swamp” in Afghanistan, “ideological
killers are regrouping with the aid of leftist governments and drug
lords” in the western hemisphere. The principal “leftist government”
in question is that of Chavez.

JINSA, a top advocate of the Iraq adventure, cites a London Times
report (actually based on Colombian government allegations) that mortar
experts from the Irish Republican Army have set up a training camp for
Colombian guerillas on Venezuelan territory in the Sierra de Perija,
a mountain chain that forms the border north of Arauca.

Another salvo comes from Otto Reich, who was Bush’s assistant secretary
of state for hemispheric affairs, a former ambassador to Venezuela
and a key figure in the Reagan-era covert destabilization campaign
against Nicaragua. Reich, in the April 11 National Review, writes:
“The first task of the U.S., and whatever coalition of the willing
it can muster in the region, is to confront the dangerous alliance
posed by Cuba and Venezuela.”

Chavez is inviting new multinational investment for the oil zone. In
August 2001, Venezuela, Colombia and Texaco agreed to sponsor a
study on a new pipeline linking natural gas fields in La Guajira,
on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, to Maracaibo, Venezuela’s main export
terminal.

In May 2003, Venezuela announced new oil finds of up to 2.4 billion
barrels in the Orinoco. Texaco (which merged with Chevron in 2001)
proposed another pipeline to pump the crude to the coast. On April 1,
2005, ChevronTexaco announced a multibillion-dollar investment in
the new oil field.

But oil companies have a sweeter deal in Colombia, where Uribe is
moving to free the industry from public oversight. Chavez, in contrast,
has boosted royalties companies must pay to fund his ambitious social
programs.

La Guajira is another of Colombia’s most violent regions, with a string
of assassinations of indigenous leaders, presumably by paramilitary
forces, already reported this year. The new cross-border pipeline
may bring human rights abuses to Venezuela as well as gas.

This pipeline would cross the Sierra de Perija, where Uribe and
JINSA now claim Colombian guerillas are based. On April 4, hundreds
of indigenous peoples’ representatives from the Venezuelan side of
the mountains marched in Caracas, demanding a halt to coal mining on
their traditional lands by such companies as ChevronTexaco and Shell.
The new pipeline would add to the military and ecological pressures
they face.

Chavez is in a difficult position. He needs oil and gas revenues
to fund the populist programs that guarantee his popularity. But
cooperating with the multinational agenda in the border zone may
cost him support among indigenous peoples. And, some critics warn,
he may be welcoming the very oil companies that are complicit in the
destabilization drive against him.

PNS contributor Bill Weinberg is editor of World War 4 Report. He is
working on a book about Colombia for Verso Books.

–Boundary_(ID_QhXs2sp4OpqAqLKPwoE1Iw)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress