Ángel Páez
LIMA, Mar 7 2006 (IPS) – A fifth rupture of the Camisea pipeline that transports natural gas from Peru s Amazon jungle region to the Pacific coast has once again exposed the weakness of the state in forcing companies to comply with national laws and international standards.
Between the first pipeline leak on Dec. 22, 2003 and the fourth, which occurred on Nov. 24, 2005, the Transportadora de Gas del Perú (TGP) consortium has been fined three times.
A spill that occurred on Saturday was the fifth in 18 months.
But a source with Peru s energy regulator, OSINERG, told IPS that TGP has appealed all of the penalties, because it considers them unjustified.
The consortium is made up of the Argentine firms Techint and PlusPetrol, Hunt Oil from Texas, the Algerian state-owned oil and gas company Sonatrach, South Korea s SK Corporation and several other firms.
Techint was in charge of building the 731-km pipeline that carries gas in southern Peru to a port on the country s western coast.
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OSINERG fined TGP 942,000 dollars for the first three leaks, and has not yet determined the amount the consortium will have to pay for the Nov. 24 incident.
But Saturday s rupture was much more serious than the previous four spills, because it triggered a fire that injured local residents of the village of Echarate in the southern region of Cuzco.
A Health Ministry report to which IPS had access states that 25 families were affected, and that a 20-year-old woman suffered first and second-degree burns, while a one-year-old infant was the victim of smoke inhalation.
Doctors have banned the consumption of fish from the local rivers and vegetables grown in the area until the degree of pollution caused by the spill can be assessed.
A Feb. 28 report by the Office of the People s Defender took the Peruvian state to task for failing to force TGP to take more drastic actions to prevent further leaks. It also stated that the reparations paid to local residents affected by the spills were too low and did not reach all of the victims.
A February report by OSINERG concluded that the first and third ruptures were the result of the pipeline being built on unstable ground, and that the second was caused when welded seams burst. The results of the analysis of the third leak are still pending.
The accidents were caused by the construction problems recently described by E-Tech International, a California-based non-profit technical research organisation, in a report that it presented to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington on Feb. 27.
The IDB was the main source of public financing for the 1.6 billion dollar Camisea project.
E-Tech said it was involved with the IDB for two years in trying to organise an independent review, but because the joint effort made little progress, it decided to carry out an environmental audit itself.
On Friday, E-Tech upheld the results of its study, and insisted that the problems were caused by the use of pipes left over from earlier projects in Brazil and Ecuador, improper welding, and the use of unqualified personnel to build the pipeline and oversee construction.
The group also pointed to a lack of adequate soil stabilisation due to excessive haste during construction, because Techint was trying to avoid hefty fines that it would have had to pay the Peruvian government for failing to meet the established deadline.
The E-Tech study further stated that there were six vulnerable points along the pipeline where new breakages and leaks were likely to occur. Five days later, the fifth leak was reported in the Kepashiato cove, which was precisely one of the points identified.
TGP strongly denied the report s conclusions, arguing that it lacked technical and evidentiary support, despite the fact that it was authored by engineer Carlos Salazar Tirado, a former Techint employee who took part in laying the pipeline and inspecting the work carried out on the project between 2002 and 2003.
The fifth leak spurred political sectors that had formerly remained silent to join in on the demands that until just days ago were voiced solely by indigenous rights and environmental organisations.
The chairs of the congressional committees on Energy and Mines, Juan Valdivia, and the Environment, Walter Alejos, told IPS that the government must answer for what has happened.
The fifth incident in such a short time demonstrates a lack of rigorous oversight of the operations of the TGP consortium, said Alejos.
The latest leak validates the report presented in Washington (by E-Tech) on the problems in the construction of the pipeline, he added.
Valdivia remarked that the government has failed to rigorously monitor TGP s activities, and said he is considering a request for operations to be halted until safety guarantees are put into place, in accordance with international standards.
On Thursday, Minister of Energy and Mines Glodomiro Sánchez is slated to appear before Congress to provide explanations.
Two of the candidates in the presidential race currently underway in Peru, former presidents Alan García (1985-1990) and Valentín Paniagua (2000-2001), lambasted the government s passivity.
Are they waiting for an even greater tragedy to happen? asked García. We don t want to wait until there is an explosion in order for them to start investigating. It has been reported that the source of the problems is shoddy construction owing to the rush to get the project finished by the deadline stipulated in the contract. This is also something that needs to be investigated.
Paniagua called for a review of the contract with regard to the security standards established and penalties for incompliance. He also demanded an international audit of the project.
It is obvious that the government has taken a slack approach, and that is why these kinds of incidents have been occurring repeatedly, he maintained.
Prime Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, known as an ardent defender of foreign investment, announced that the government will order an international inspection of the state of the pipes and welds, as a means of deflecting criticisms.
The audit will be financed and overseen by the Peruvian government. There will be no involvement on the part of TGP, he stressed.
Nevertheless, Kuczynski reiterated his suspicions of alleged sabotage. How odd that there was a breakage at a spot where a foreign consulting firm (E-Tech) warned last week that one would occur.
Kuczynski further alluded to an environmentalist conspiracy behind the E-Tech report.
A special commission set up by the Ministry of Energy and Mines has been sent to the site where the latest leak took place to determine its cause.
Neither the Ministry of Energy and Mines nor OSINERG is living up to its duty, said Jaime Bustamente, the mayor of Echarate, the village affected by the leak. People feel a great sense of insecurity, and that s why we will go out and protest. We are not going to wait for another explosion, he declared.
