Weekly Report - 27 March 2013 (WR-13-12)

PERU | Government orders Pluspetrol to clean up. On 25 March Peru’s environment minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, announced that the government has ordered Argentine oil company, Pluspetrol, to clean up the Pastaza River basin, located near the border with Ecuador, and which local indigenous people complain has suffered from environmental damage following an alleged oil spill last year. According to Pulgar-Vidal, the Peruvian government has now declared a state of environmental emergency in the remote Amazonian region of Loreto, where it is suspected that Pluspetrol-operated wells have been contaminating the environment for years, so that experts could go to the area to corroborate the extent of the environmental damage.