Repeat Oil Spills Turning Peruvian Amazon into 'Sacrifice Zone' for Big Oil

From:  Common Dreams 

by Nika Knight, staff writer

 

'The situation is criminal'

 

 

Photos from the last devastating spill show local Indigenous people attempting to clean the spill themselves, as is happening again with this weekend's disaster. (Photo: Marco Arrana Zegarra/Twitter/cc)

 

Less than six months after two horrific oil spills in the Peruvian Amazon devastated Indigenous communities and the local ecosystem, yet another spill in the region has been reported.

On Friday afternoon, a leak was discovered in the Nothern Peruvian Pipeline—the same pipeline responsible for the earlier spills—that eventually coated over 16,000 square meters of Amazon rainforest in Peru's northeast Loreto region with crude oil, according to OEFA, the country's environmental regulator.

The pipeline is operated by the state-run corporation PetroPeru. MORE