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Protest against Peru exports natGAS called off
Hundreds of Peruvians opposed to natural gas exports called off a weeklong protest on Sunday saying they have agreed to hold talks with the government.
Protesters in the region of Convencion, some 285 miles (460 km) south of
the capital Lima, torched part of a work camp, cut a fiber optic cable
that helps control gas flows, threw rocks at police, and at one point
took two workers hostage, the consortium that runs the pipeline said.
The natural gas transported by a pipeline from the Camisea fields in
southern Peru to an export facility on the coast never stopped flowing,
but the government warned that electricity supplies for a third of the
country were at risk.
“By unanimity … following a request from the prime minister we have
agreed to temporarily suspend the indefinite strike,” Ricardo Caballero,
a legal adviser to the group organizing the protest, told local radio
network RPP.
Prime Minister Javier Velasquez last week said the government was not
going to negotiate with protesters unless they called the demonstrations
off.
Caballero said talks with Velazquez had been scheduled for Monday.
Peru’s first liquefied natural gas export plant opened in June and
protesters fear that exports of natural gas will lead to domestic energy
shortages in the future.
The government says that gas from the wells near the protest site is not
being exported and that fuel shipped abroad comes from wells elsewhere
in Peru.
President Alan Garcia, who has worked hard to lure foreign investment,
says there is no risk of gas shortages. Though economic growth has
surged during his time in office, his term has been marred by protests
over mining and oil projects.
Peru is a leading global metals exporter and has attracted substantial
investment in recent years from companies exploring for oil and natural
gas.
Most gas companies operating in the South American country belong to a
series of consortia that extract, transport and export the fuel. They
include Repsol-YPF, U.S.-based Hunt Oil, Argentina’s Pluspetrol, South
Korea’s SK Energy and Japan’s Marubeni.
The government has sought to frame the protests as a political ploy
promoted by the opposition in the run-up to regional elections in
October and general elections next year.
Meanwhile, coca leaf growers in the region of Ucayali, 480 miles (780
km) east of Lima, suspended a protest on Sunday against the eradication
of coca plantations in the world’s top grower of the plant used to make
cocaine.
The farmers agreed to call off protests because the government decided
to temporarily halt a coca eradication program in the area, RPP radio
said.
At least one protester was killed when coca farmers clashed with police last week.
Source: Reuters
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