POLITICS | Strike called in Loreto following award of new ‘Lot 192’ concession. On 24 August the governor of Peru’s Amazonian Loreto Region, Fernando Meléndez, announced the launch of a 24-hour region-wide strike in Loreto from today (25 August) to protest the government’s decision to award a new exploitation concession contract for the ‘Lot 192’ oilfield to Canadian firm Pacific Stratus Energy. The strike follows the 21 August announcement by the national government that it had awarded a new short-term (two-year) concession contract to Pacific following direct negotiations with the firm. The fate of Lot 192, Peru’s most productive oilfield,…

Development: On 24 August Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos said that his government was prepared to “firmly” defend the rights of all its nationals that live in Venezuela. Significance: Santos’s comments came on the back of reports that hundreds of Colombian nationals have been forcibly deported from the Venezuelan state of Táchira after President Nicolás Maduro declared a state of emergency in the area. With Maduro maintaining that there is no possibility that this will be lifted any time soon, the concern is that this is creating a humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of Colombian migrants left homeless and jobless in…