Part of Bush's budget allocation for anti-drug activities in Columbia is $98 million dollars slated to equip and train the Columbian military to protect the Caņo-Limon oil pipeline. Undersecretary of State Mark Grossman gave this reason in a press conference in Columbia:
As the Foreign Minister and I were speaking before, that pipeline was closed 266 days last year. Colombia loses probably 40 million dollars a month in revenues. For those of you who are interested in the environment, over the last 15 years the attacks to that pipeline has put out into the Colombian soil almost two million of barrels of oil. That equals eight "Exxon-Valdez" spills in Alaska.
That's not the whole reason of course. As the budget summary mentions, "Colombia was the source of about two percent of U.S. oil imports, creating a mutual interest in protecting this economic asset." So, it's not just good for Columbia, it's good for America. Good. But it's not just good for America, it's good for Occidental Petroleum, which gets the oil from the pipeline. According to their 2000 annual report, production through that pipeline was down about 25%, a drop of 32,000 barrels a day, from the previous year due in part to "insurgent activity" and in the 4th quarter of last year, production from that pipeline dropped from the previous quarter by over 2% due to outages. At current prices, the 2000 drop corresponds to rougly $236 million, if I'm doing the math right. What a deal, taxpayers are putting out $98 million to protect a couple of hundred million dollars in oil company profits. Oh, but I forgot - it's good for Columbia and America too.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch and other organizations have reported that Columbia has failed to meet conditions set forth in the Foreign Appropriations Act passed early this year which are required before funding can be continued. In particular, ties between the Columbian military and the paramilitary groups that some of the funding is intended to combat have not been cut. [via Ethel The Blog]
