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Peru's Petroleum Play:
Amazon Oil and Politics

Kelly Hearn has made four trips into the Amazonian rainforest to give a big-picture look at the hydrocarbon industry’s push into the Tropical Andes. Media attention has turned on crop, logging and cattle threats to the Brazilian Amazon. But recent oil and gas finds are turning the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains and the adjacent Amazonian lowlands of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia into a hydrocarbon hotspot.

In Peru and Ecuador, where biodiversity levels peak and activists say Big Oil has penetrated public institutions, the problem is especially acute: Over half of Peru’s pristine rainforests are now zoned for oil and gas, while 80 percent of the Ecuadorian Amazon is on the auction block.

Kelly’s work synthesizes a year’s worth of reporting on hydrocarbon activities and influences in northern Ecuador and south-eastern Peru. His story presents evidence of a government cover-up involving Camisea, a highly controversial rainforest pipeline in the Peruvian Amazon, and presents critics’ allegations against the project’s backers, including Hunt Oil, a Dallas oil company with close Bush ties. His story examines the controversial role played by the U.S. taxpayer supported Inter-American Development Bank in the fast expanding Amazonian oil boom, and maps self-referencing links between the bank, Hunt Oil and formerly high-ranking Peruvian government officials.

Related Reporting Project:
Ecuador: Jungle Tensions

About the reporter:
Dyersburg State Gazette on Kelly Hearns

Kelly Hearn

Kelly Hearn is an independent correspondent to National Geographic News and The Christian Science Monitor. His work has been funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and The North American Congress for Latin America. A former UPI reporter, he has published in many publications and sites including The Nation, Alternet, Grist, World Politics Watch and The Washington Times. His work has been cited by Harpers magazine and he has appeared as a guest on radio programs including Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!....

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