World

Major banks support rainforest oil project despite problems

Published

2 years ago

November 4, 2022

Major banks support rainforest oil project despite problems

LONDON (AP) — Within the Putumayo area of the Colombian Amazon, Segundo Meneses’ every day routine took him to the Chufiya river, its banks verdant and waters alive with catfish and piranha. On one morning seven years in the past, he observed a darkish movie lapping the shore. The place the river turned a bend, it turned to black. It was an oil slick that he says went on to sicken his younger household and poison their cows and pigs.

The British regulation agency Leigh Day is now suing Amerisur, the oil firm working within the area, on behalf of 171 Putumayo farmers, together with Meneses. That spill was not the one complication with this explicit oil operation. Close by Siona Indigenous folks say they reject the oil pumping and can combat it. This area can be awash in coca manufacturing and former insurgent teams dispute drug territory, generally disrupting the circulate of oil. Then there are reviews by United Nations rapporteurs and an interfaith non-profit group that say the oil firm, Amerisur Sources PLC, could have labored with rebels to stress the Siona and native farmers to stop their opposition with a purpose to preserve oil flowing.

But none of this appeared to discourage an $800 million oil and gasoline agency primarily based in Chile named GeoPark Ltd. from shopping for Amerisur two years in the past. GeoPark efficiently lined up banks to assist it get hold of the Putumayo oilfields, indicating that even with local weather modifications hitting broad areas of the globe, backing for the actions that trigger it’s nonetheless obtainable. Demand for crude oil continues to rise, not fall, underscoring the lure for oil corporations and banks to maintain working as they’ve for many years.

“If banks assist finance an organization like GeoPark, it appears there’s nothing they’ll refuse to the touch,” stated Maaike Beenes, banks and local weather lead on the non-profit BankTrack, an environmental advocacy group primarily based within the Netherlands. This deal, she stated, raises quite a few purple flags due to Amerisur’s legacy, “from doing enterprise in a battle zone to fossil gas growth in delicate ecosystems of the Amazon, to a historical past of violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights.”

The way in which GeoPark purchased all of British-based Amerisur in January 2020, absorbing the corporate and conserving its model, is a window into how some banks assist fossil gas initiatives even once they seem to go in opposition to their very own insurance policies.

Citibank and Itaú Unibanco supplied GeoPark a bridge mortgage. The corporate then seemed to banks for assist issuing $350 million value of bonds to pay for the acquisition, Bloomberg knowledge and public statements present. Brazilian Itaú Unibanco and Citibank served as “bookrunners” on the bonds, and the Financial institution of New York Mellon agreed to facilitate funds on them. Bookrunners promote bonds, coordinate orders and usually use their status to lend confidence on bond gives.

The deal enabled GeoPark to acquire Amerisur’s principal asset: 11 oilfields strung throughout the extremely biodiverse Putumayo basin. They now comprise virtually a 3rd of GeoPark’s hydrocarbon fields, the remaining dotted throughout Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru.

The following 12 months, in 2021, U.S. and European monetary establishments helped GeoPark restructure its debt, making more cash obtainable to the corporate. Financial institution of America, Credit score Suisse and JPMorgan suggested on issuing one other $150 million in bonds, GeoPark press releases present.

Even being the consumer of such essential banks lent GeoPark credibility, stated former bond dealer Jo Richardson of the Anthropocene Fastened Revenue Institute, who analyzed knowledge and paperwork from the deal.

A SULLIED RIVER

In a submitting with the British Excessive Courtroom, Segundo Meneses known as the Chufiya river “an essential supply of meals for my household and the entire neighborhood.”

However the river was modified by occasions that day. In keeping with court docket paperwork, an armed group attacked 5 Amerisur oil tanker vans and compelled the drivers to empty their a great deal of crude oil right into a wetland, the place it flowed into the Agua Negra tributary, and from there into the Chufiya and past.

For the Colombian oil trade, insurgent assaults on oil infrastructure have been a plague for many years. However the farmers argue this assault was foreseeable, given ongoing battle within the space.  For a very long time afterwards, the cassava and plantain farmers say, their water was contaminated.

Fishing grew to become unattainable, stated Meneses, the edible fish gone.

“I caught a 15-kilo fish (33 lbs.) and it tasted like oil, and I couldn’t eat it,” he stated in an affidavit. 

Within the dry season, the household had no alternative however to drink from and wash within the river, which gave them diarrhea, rashes and abdomen aches, he stated.

“For us water is life,” Meneses continued. “Possibly I’ll die tomorrow however my kids will nonetheless stay right here and I don’t need them to stay in an space with such polluted water.”

GeoPark’s spokesperson stated the corporate has brought on no contamination, maintains the very best requirements to guard the atmosphere, and is dedicated to compensation for any unfavorable impacts. Amerisur, now Amerisur Sources Ltd, cleaned up the spilled oil, the spokesperson stated, and would defend itself within the courts. Concerning legal responsibility for previous acts, she stated, they’re “questions of regulation and truth on a case-by-case foundation.” 

OIL IN A CONFLICT ZONE

For critics, the Amerisur belongings ought to by no means have discovered a purchaser, or financing. There have been quite a few purple flags for banks contemplating serving to with this oil deal, they are saying. Months earlier than the primary bond issuance, the Siona of the Buenavista reservation informed GeoPark in a public assertion they’d not permit oil manufacturing or “extractive operations in our territory.” They stated Amerisur had already tried to take their pure sources by way of “unlawful and rigged motion.” The tribe stated it might defend its territory from “grave dangers as a result of poisonous wastes,” and “impacts on our religious practices.”

Colombia’s Constitutional Courtroom acknowledges the Siona as susceptible to extermination. Additionally earlier than the bond deal, a 2019 ruling discovered Amerisur left explosives on Siona land throughout seismic research. The corporate was ordered to stop this exercise. In a 3rd, ongoing case, the Buenavista Siona, who say their lands are overlapped by two GeoPark oilfields, are in search of 52,000 hectares (128,000 acres) of disputed territory there to be added to their reservation. 

GeoPark denied in an electronic mail it’s working within the Siona reservation or the extra land sought by them. Relationships with Indigenous persons are primarily based on “dialogue, respect and constructing belief,” the corporate stated. The corporate says in 2021 it requested Colombia to cancel the concession to the oilfield the Siona say overlaps their land, and is ready for this to occur.

PARAMILITARIES IN THE AREA

The Putumayo area can be a hotbed of coca cultivation and cocaine trafficking. Splinter teams of former FARC rebels combat one another for management of the commerce. One faction, the Border Command, is listed with the U.S. Treasury Division as a terrorist group. In December 2020, earlier than the second bond deal, a revered Colombian human rights NGO’s report made a powerful declare. The Interfaith Justice and Peace Fee alleged the Border Command was collaborating with Amerisur to guard its oil operations.

Displaced farmers had informed the fee they had been ordered by the rebels to not oppose Amerisur’s exploration, one insurgent reportedly saying, “We have now negotiated with the corporate and can guarantee the operation.”

5 United Nations particular rapporteurs for human rights additionally wrote to the chief of the U.N. Improvement Programme, Achim Steiner, warning: “Alleged hyperlinks exist between the corporate (Amerisur) and the paramilitaries current within the space, which have been denounced by the Siona Peoples earlier than the Constitutional Courtroom.”

The U.N. rapporteurs wrote: “Financial actors have allied with irregular armed actors to generate, inside the Indigenous communities, acts of violence that … displace the Indigenous folks from their ancestral territories, thus clearing the best way for … these initiatives.”

Colombian investigative information outlet Cuestión Pública, working with the information group Mongabay, stated two unbiased sources stated paramilitaries had compelled a farming neighborhood to attend conferences the place they had been ordered to not hinder Amerisur and will settle for any gives it makes. Two different unbiased sources confirmed an alliance between Amerisur and the insurgent group, their report stated.

And the Ombudsman’s Workplace of Colombia, the nation’s human rights company, revealed a threat alert on its web site saying neighborhood complaints have been acquired about stress exerted by “unlawful armed actors” to permit oil extraction. Amerisur was not named in that alert. However the report did observe Amerisur is the one of many two largest operators within the space of Putumayo.

GeoPark rejected any allegation of collaboration with Border Command as “100% false.”

“GeoPark has by no means had any relationship with unlawful armed teams and calls for the identical of its staff and the whole provide chain,” a spokesperson stated.

BANK SUPPORT

The backing by the banks buoyed GeoPark. In April 2021, James F. Park, then CEO, stated in a press launch the deal “demonstrates the assist and credibility we’ve got earned in worldwide capital markets.” This places the corporate in a “stronger, extra versatile, much less dangerous and more cost effective place,” he stated.

Citibank, Itaú Unibanco, and the Financial institution of New York Mellon all stated environmental points had been of nice significance to them. Citibank and Itaú additionally emphasised they severely take into account social dangers and conduct due diligence. Citi stated it’s strengthening these insurance policies. JPMorgan stated it critiques all delicate offers with purchasers.

Financial institution of America and Credit score Suisse declined to remark.

In the meantime, within the rainforest, oil pumping continues. Meneses and his fellow farmers hope for a judgement earlier than Christmas; British courts have ordered GeoPark to put aside 3.2 million kilos (U.S. $3.8 million) to pay if the farmers win.

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Related Press local weather and environmental protection receives assist from a number of personal foundations. See extra about AP’s local weather initiative right here. The AP is solely chargeable for all content material.

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“Citi continues to strengthen our environmental and social threat coverage and expectations for purchasers to keep away from deforestation,” the spokesperson added, saying Amazon biodiversity issues now require enhanced checks.

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World

Meloni condemns antisemitism among ruling party's youth league

Published

25 mins ago

June 28, 2024

Press Room

Meloni condemns antisemitism among ruling party's youth league

Left-wing news outlet Fanpage claimed it had video evidence of some National Youth members using racist slurs and making a Nazi salute.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has condemned racist and antisemitic remarks made by some members of the ruling Brothers of Italy party’s youth league.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Meloni said antisemitism and racism are incompatible with the party after two leading members of the National Youth resigned over alleged antisemtic remarks made against a Jewish Senator.

“I have said many times and repeat, I think that those who have racist, antisemitic or nostalgic feelings have simply got their home wrong, because these feelings are incompatible with the Brothers of Italy, they are incompatible with the Italian right, they are incompatible with the political line which we have clearly defined in recent years, and therefore I do not accept that there are ambiguities on this,” she said.

Meloni’s comments come after a report appeared in the left-wing online newspaper, Fanpage, which claimed it had video and audio recordings of some National Youth members using racist slurs and making Nazi salutes.

But Meloni also took a swipe at Fanpage’s reporting methods.

“I think that if we want to call it a journalistic investigation, the same attitude and the same investigation would be carried out in all the youth organisations of other political parties. We don’t know what could come out, we won’t know. You know why? Because in the history of the Italian Republic, what Fanpage did with Brothers of Italy is a first,” she said.

“It has never even been considered that they could infiltrate a political organisation, secretly record its meetings, also record the personal affairs of minors.”

The Fanpage investigation, entitled ‘Melonian Youth’, has sent shockwaves through the Brothers of Italy at the same time as Meloni has been seeking to cement a reputation as a moderate voice on the EU stage.

There has also been outrage from members of the Jewish Community of Rome, with some calling on Meloni to punish the youth wing members exposed in the investigation.

“The Jewish Community of Rome condemns the shameful images of racism and antisemitism that emerged from the Fanpage investigation,” president Victor Fadlun posted on X.

He’s urged the party to take “appropriate action,” saying it was “imperative that society” reacts against discrimination.

Brothers of Italy has its roots in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), formed in 1946 as a successor to Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement that ruled Italy for more than 20 years.

Meloni has repeatedly condemned the racist, anti-Jewish laws enacted by Mussolini in 1938 in a bid to turn her party into a mainstream conservative force.

But she has also ignored calls to declare herself “anti-fascist”, prompting some of her critics to say she has failed to fully distance herself from neo-fascism.

World

Jeff Goldblum Is Zeus in KAOS: Get Release Date for Greek Mythology Riff

Published

6 hours ago

June 28, 2024

Press Room

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World

ISIS remains global threat a decade after declaring caliphate, US military official says

Published

7 hours ago

June 28, 2024

Press Room

ISIS remains global threat a decade after declaring caliphate, US military official says

Ari Fleischer: Democrats have a crisis on their hands

Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer on liberal media expressing concern over Biden’s performance at the CNN Presidential Debate and says Democrats are shocked because they haven’t seen previous concerning behavior from Biden.

A decade after declaring its caliphate, ISIS no longer controls any land, has lost many leaders, and is mostly out of the news.
The group continues to recruit members and conduct deadly attacks globally, including recent operations in Iran and Russia.
ISIS sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq continue to attack government forces and U.S.-backed Syrian fighters.

A decade after the Islamic State militant group declared its caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria, the extremists no longer control any land, have lost many prominent leaders and are mostly out of the world news headlines.

Still, the group continues to recruit members and claim responsibility for deadly attacks around the world, including lethal operations in Iran and Russia earlier this year that left scores dead. Its sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq still carry out attacks against government forces in both countries as well as U.S.-backed Syrian fighters, at a time when Iraq’s government is negotiating with Washington over a possible withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The group that once attracted tens of thousands of fighters and supporters from around the world to come to Syria and Iraq, and at its peak ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom was notorious for its brutality. It beheaded civilians, slaughtered 1,700 captured Iraqi soldiers in a short period, and enslaved and raped thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities.

AUTHORITIES NAB 8 SUSPECTED TERRORISTS WITH TIES TO ISIS IN MULTI-CITY STING OPERATION

“Daesh remains a threat to international security,” U.S. Army Maj. Gen. J.B. Vowell, the commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve, said in comments sent to The Associated Press. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Iraqi Army soldiers celebrate as they hold a flag of the Islamic State group they captured during a military operation to regain control of a village outside Mosul, Iraq, on Nov. 29, 2016. Ten years after the Islamic State group declared its caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria, the extremists now control no land, have lost many prominent founding leaders and are mostly away from the world news headlines. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)

“We maintain our intensity and resolve to combat and destroy any remnants of groups that share Daesh ideology,” Vowell said.

In recent years, the group’s branches have gained strength around the world, mainly in Africa and Afghanistan, but its leadership is believed to be in Syria. The four leaders of the group who have been killed since 2019 were all hunted down in Syria.

In 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq group, which was formed as an offshoot of al-Qaida, distanced himself from the al-Qaida global network and clashed with its branch in Syria, then known as the Nusra Front. The group renamed itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and launched a military campaign during which it captured large parts of Syria and Iraq.

TERROR FEARS MOUNT AFTER ARRESTS OF BORDER CROSSERS LINKED TO ISIS: ‘WE’RE HEADED FOR ANOTHER 9/11’

In early June 2014, the group captured the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, as the Iraqi army collapsed. Later that month, it opened the border between areas it controlled in Syria and Iraq.

On June 29, 2014, al-Baghdadi appeared as a black-robed figure to deliver a sermon from the pulpit of Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri in which he declared a caliphate and urged Muslims around the world to swear allegiance to it and obey him as its leader. Since then, the group has identified itself as the Islamic State.

“Al-Baghdadi’s sermon — an extension of the extremist ideology of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — continue to inspire ISIS members globally,” said retired U.S. Army officer Myles B. Caggins III, senior nonresident fellow at the New Lines Institute and former spokesman for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. He was referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. strike in 2006.

From the self-declared caliphate, the group planned deadly attacks around the world and carried out brutal killings, including the beheading of Western journalists, setting a Jordanian pilot on fire while locked inside a cage days after his fighter jet was shot down, and drowning opponents in pools after locking them in giant metal cages.

A coalition of more than 80 countries, led by the United States, was formed to fight IS and a decade , the alliance continues to carry out raids against the militants’ hideouts in Syria and Iraq.

Iraqi Army soldiers secure streets in a village recently liberated from Islamic State militants outside Mosul, Iraq, on Dec. 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)

The war against IS officially ended in March 2019, when U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces captured the eastern Syrian town of Baghouz, which was the last sliver of land the extremists controlled.

Before the loss of Baghouz, IS was defeated in Iraq in July 2017, when Iraqi forces captured the northern city of Mosul. Three months later, IS suffered a major blow when SDF captured the Syrian northern city of Raqqa, which was the group’s de-facto capital.

The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.

Still, at least in Iraq, government and military officials have asserted that the group is too weak to stage a comeback.

“It is not possible for (IS) to claim a caliphate once again. They don’t have the command or control capabilities to do so,” Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Tahseen al-Khafaji told the AP at the headquarters of the Joint Special Operations Command in Baghdad, where Iraqi officers and officials from the U.S.-led coalition supervise operations against the extremists.

BIDEN’S ‘PRE-9/11 POSTURE’ TO BLAME FOR ISIS MIGRANTS SLIPPING THROUGH CRACKS: EXPERT

The command, which was formed to lead operations against the group starting weeks after the caliphate was declared, remains active.

Al-Khafaji said that IS is now made up of sleeper cells in caves and the desert in remote areas, as Iraqi security forces keep them on the run. During the first five months of the year, he said, Iraqi forces conducted 35 airstrikes against IS and killed 51 of its members.

Also at the headquarters, Sabah al-Noman of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service said that having lost its hold on Iraq, the militant group is focused mostly on Africa, especially the Sahel region, to try to get a foothold there.

Smoke rises as Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces fight against Islamic State militants to regain control of al-Bakr neighborhood in Mosul, Iraq, on Dec. 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)

“It is not possible for them to take control of a village, let alone an Iraqi city,” he said. He added that the U.S.-led coalition continues to carry out reconnaissance and surveillance in order to provide Iraqi forces with intelligence, and the security forces “deal with this information directly.”

Although IS appears to be under control in Iraq, it has killed dozens of government forces and SDF fighters over the past several months in Syria.

“Daesh terrorist cells continue in their terrorist operations,” SDF spokesman Siamand Ali said. “They are present on the ground and are working at levels higher than those of previous years.”

In northeast Syria, SDF fighters guard around 10,000 captured IS fighters in around two dozen detention facilities — including 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them.

The SDF also oversees about 33,000 family members of suspected IS fighters, mostly women and children in the heavily-guarded al-Hol camp, which is seen as a breeding center for future extremists.

Their worst attack since the group’s defeat occurred in January 2022, when the extremists attacked the Gweiran Prison, or al-Sinaa — a Kurdish-run facility in Syria’s northeast holding thousands of IS militants. The attack led to 10 days of fighting between SDF fighters and IS militants that left nearly 500 dead on both sides, before the SDF brought the situation under control.

Caggins said that the U.S.-led coalition’s “military advice and assistance” to Iraq Security Forces, Kurdish Iraqi fighters and the SDF “is essential to maintain dominance against ISIS remnants as well as securing more than 10,000 ISIS detainees at makeshift jails and camps in Syria.”