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Article

21 Jan 2007

Author:
Larry Rohter, New York Times

Vast Pipelines in Amazon Face Challenges Over Protecting Rights and Rivers [Brazil]

...[T]here was initially strong resistance to [a new 400-mile] pipeline [from Urucu to Manaus] from local people, environmental and indigenous groups... Rather than steamrolling the opponents and skeptics, however,...[Petrobras] chose to woo them. The two million residents of Amazonas State have been promised economic benefits that have contributed to the project’s $1.15 billion price, and scientists and environmentalists were consulted about how to minimize damage to the jungle that blankets the state... “They have really tried to minimize the impact, and the outcome is not as bad as we had feared,” said Paulo Adário, director of Greenpeace’s Amazon campaign... A second pipeline, which would head south to Porto Velho...is a far more complicated matter. That project still faces challenges from advocates for the environment and rights of indigenous people because it will cross rivers and Indian lands... The challenges Petrobras has had to confront also raise questions about the viability of the grand plan of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, to build a 5,000-mile gas pipeline from Caracas to Buenos Aires... [E]nvironmental groups have complained that Mr. Chávez is trying to rush or even bypass the hearings and studies that are normally required and that his plan would worsen problems of deforestation and population migration.