Industry Defends Drilling, Ignores Water Contamination

In a packed and sometimes contentious hearing [1] on Capitol Hill Thursday, representatives of the oil and gas industry and their state regulators vigorously defended the practice of injecting toxic fluids underground without federal regulatory oversight [2].

Peru: Police, Indigenous Indians Clash in Protests Over Resources

Up to 20 people are thought to have died in the Peruvian Amazon during clashes between police and indigenous Indians protesting against oil and gas exploration on ancestral lands.

Indigenous leaders told AP news agency that 15 protesters had been killed in the unrest, while officials told local radio that five police officers died.

The confrontation apparently began before dawn on Friday in Bagua in the rainforest where companies want to develop oil and natural gas projects, media reports said.

Oil Firms and Loggers 'Push Indigenous People to Brink of Extinction'

Five "uncontacted" tribes are at imminent risk of extinction as oil companies, colonists and loggers invade their territiories. The semi-nomadic groups, who live deep in the forests of Peru, Brazil and Paraguay, are vulnerable to common western diseases such as flu and measles but also risk being killed by armed gangs, according to a report by Survival International, which identifies the five groups as the most threatened on Earth.

Big Oil Meetings Draw Activists, Some Protest Votes

SAN RAMON, Calif./DALLAS - Chevron Corp shareholders rejected a call for an environmental protection report on its operations, disappointing activists and funds worried by a $27 billion damages claim against it in Ecuador.

The closely watched proposal at its annual meeting on Wednesday, for a report on protection of people and the environment in countries where it operates, had 7 percent support from shareholders, the oil company said, citing preliminary results.

Amazonian Indigenous Protest Provokes Peruvian Government Reprisals

LIMA, Peru - After more than six weeks of protests by Peru's Amazonian indigenous groups that have included blockades of major roads and waterways and the shutting down an oil pipeline pumping station, the Peruvian government has begun to crack down.

During the past two weeks, the administration of President Alan Garcia has declared a state of emergency in the country's Amazon provinces, issued a decree allowing the military to help the national police maintain order there, and charged the protest's leaders with crimes against the state.

Shell on Trial: Oil Giant Faces Charges of Human Rights Abuses

Royal Dutch Shell will revisit one of the darkest periods of its history tomorrow as a potentially groundbreaking court case opens in New York.

The oil giant stands accused of complicity in the 1995 execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian environmental activist.

The world's boardrooms are watching the case, which is seen as a test of whether transnational companies owned or operating in the US can be held responsible for human rights abuses committed abroad.

US Energy Use a National Security Threat: Study

WASHINGTON - US dependence on fossil fuels and a vulnerable electric grid pose a perilous threat to the country's national security, retired military officers warned Monday in a report.

The threat requires urgent action and the Defense Department should lead the way in transforming America's energy use by aggressively pursuing efficiency measures and renewable sources, said the report by CNA, a nonprofit research group.

In Ecuador, Resentment of an Oil Company Oozes

SHUSHUFINDI, Ecuador - Mention to Anita Ruíz the name of the giant oil company Chevron, and she trembles with rage. At her wooden hut here in the Amazon forest, where oil-project flares illuminate the night sky, she points to a portrait of her youngest son, who died seven years ago of leukemia at age 16.

"We believe the American oilmen created the pollution that killed my son," said Ms. Ruíz, 58, who lives in a clearing where Texaco, the American oil company that Chevron acquired in 2001, once poured oil waste into pits used decades ago for drilling wells.