Oil and Colombia

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, Oct. 4, 2002

New Role for U.S. in Colombia: Protecting a Vital Oil Pipeline
By JUAN FORERO

SARAVENA, Colombia, Sept. 27 ? Casting a wary eye for rebel snipers, Lt. 
Felipe Zúñiga and his counterinsurgency troops slog through the wet fields 
and patches of jungle here. Their mission has nothing to do with drugs ? 
until now, the defining issue in Colombia for American policy makers ? but 
instead with protecting a pipeline that carries crude to an oil-hungry America.

The 500-mile pipeline, which snakes through eastern Colombia, transporting 
100,000 barrels of oil a day for Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles, is 
emerging as a new front in the terror war. One of Colombia's most valuable 
assets, the pipeline has long been vulnerable to bombings by Colombia's 
guerrilla groups, which along with the country's paramilitary outfits are 
included on the Bush administration's list of terrorist organizations.

Sometime in the next month, in a significant shift in American policy, 
United States Special Forces will arrive in Colombia to begin laying the 
groundwork for the training of Lieutenant Zúñiga and his 35-man squad in 
the finer arts of counterinsurgency. Over the next two years, 10 American 
helicopters will bolster the Colombian counterinsurgency efforts, and some 
4,000 more troops will receive American training, which will begin in 
earnest in January, Bush administration and American military officials 
said in interviews in recent days.

The policy shift dovetails with the Bush administration's new, global 
emphasis on expanding and diversifying the sources of America's oil 
imports, with an eye to reducing dependence on Middle Eastern oil. That new 
approach, outlined in the administration's energy report issued last year, 
is gaining ever more importance with the threat to Persian Gulf oil 
supplies from the looming war with Iraq.

The $94 million counterinsurgency program is also an important element in 
the offensive by Colombia's new government against two rebel groups and a 
paramilitary force that dominate much of the country.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/04/international/americas/04COLO.html


Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org


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