Gas for Peru v green imperialism; Development and the environment.(The row over the Camisea project)(gas field development)
"Gas for Peru v green imperialism; Development and the environment.(The row over the Camisea project)(gas field development). ." The Economist (US). 368.8336 (August 9, 2003): 28US. Expanded
Academic ASAP. Gale. University of Pittsburgh Libraries. 29 Feb. 2008
<http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?
&contentSet=IACDocuments&type=retrieve&tabID=T003&prodId=EAIM&docId=A106447291&source=gale&srcprod=EAIM&userGroupName=upitt_main&version=1.0>.
Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2003 Economist Newspaper Ltd.
Where should the balance between development and the environment be struck? And who should strike it?
EVEN if natural gas from the Amazon jungle reaches Peru's capital, Lima, next August as planned, it will have taken almost two decades to get there. Royal Dutch/Shell started exploring the huge Camisea gas field in the mid-1980s, but finally walked away from it in 1998 after years of wrangling with Peru's governments over the contract for the country's biggest energy project. Other firms have stepped in. But now
American environmentalists are making a final attempt to halt the $1.5 billion project, which if it goes ahead should turn Peru from an importer of fuel into an exporter. The outcome of this battle will be a test of the political viability of big development projects in South America.
Camisea has proven reserves of 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 500m barrels of condensates--more than enough to supply Lima for decades. In 2000, Peru's government awarded a licence to develop the field to an "upstream" consortium headed by Pluspetrol of Argentina and Hunt Oil, an American firm. A second "downstream" consortium is building a 700 km (440 mile) pipeline to the coast. Around two-thirds