Monday April 3, 8:04 pm Eastern Time
Oxy to appeal Colombia court oil
ruling in 48 hrs
BOGOTA, April 3 (Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp
(NYSE:OXY - news) said Monday it would lodge an appeal
within the next 48 hours against a court ruling that prevented
it drilling
for oil in a northeast corner of Colombia that an Indian tribe
claims as
ancestral lands.
In a surprise announcement last Friday, state-run oil company
Ecopetrol
said the 7,000-strong U'wa
Indian community had successfully obtained a court injunction
blocking the
sinking of a first test well
in the promising Samore block.
Occidental and the U'was have been locked in a long-running
legal dispute
over lands rights since the U.S. oil company was awarded exploration
rights
in 1992.
Experts say the block could harbor some 2.5 billion barrels
of reserves and
could ensure that Colombia would remain self-sufficient in oil
for the
medium term. Without a
significant new find, Colombia, which currently produces about
800,000
barrels of crude per day, is set to become a net oil importer
by 2005.
``The limit to lodge an appeal expires Wednesday so we will
file within
that time frame,'' an Occidental spokesman said. ``We hope the
judge will
reverse the decision so
that we can restart the civil construction works.''
The U'was claim that the proposed Gibraltar-1 drill site, though
500 meters
(yards) beyond the limit
of their officially-recognized reserve, is still within the territory
occupied by their ancestors.
Last year, the Colombian government increased the U'wa reservation
fivefold
to more than 540,000
acres (220,000 hectares). Shortly afterward, the Environment ministry
granted an exploration license
to Occidental.
The Bogota court that considered the new U'wa injunction last
week ruled
that drilling a test well at
Gibraltar-1 would affect the right of the U'was to a peaceful
existence.
The U'was regard oil as the ``life blood of Mother Earth''.
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