ENVIRONMENT: Pipeline a Threat to Argentine Eco-system

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 5 1998 (IPS) - A foreign consortium wanting to build a gas pipeline in northwestern Argentina is still awaiting the government go-ahead to start work on the project that would go right through one of the county’s biologically richest eco- systems.

The eco-system – named ‘Yungas’, an indigenous word meaning ‘abundance’ – is a mountain jungle area of about three million hectares that stretches from southern Bolivia into the Argentine provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Catamarca and Tucuman.

Nor Andino – the company comprising Tractebel of belgium, Southern of the United States and Edelnor of Chile – is waiting for government permission to build a 150-kilometer pipeline to be known as ‘Norgas.’ If completed, it would bring gas to northern Chile, in direct competition with the group Gas Atacamas, made up of CMS Energy of the United States and Endesa of Spain.

The mega-project would extend from Campo Duran, in the province of Salta, pass through Yungas, and continue across the province of Jujuy and into Antofagasta in northern Chile.

Gas Atacama is already building a pipeline that will provide energy to the same region in northern Chile. It is longer, and, while not judged to be environmentally harmless, does not pass through fragile areas but rather is parallel to the one projected by Nor Andino and does not cross Yungas.

ENARGAS, the official regulating entity for privatized gas services, must authorize the new project. Because it does not have experts to evaluate its viability, it has contracted a consulting firm and gave it only 15 days to make a decision.

The government of the province of Salta thinks that it is unnecessary to have two gas pipelines, and has asked the firms to join efforts. However, they remain competitors and ENARGAS could approve the second project.

The problem arises because inside Yungas is a biological corridor, a critical area for the conservation of unique species in the country according to environmental groups which would be crossed by the Norgas project, threatening the area’s biodiversity.

Emiliano Ezcurra, director of the biodiversity campaign for Greenpeace, said that Yungas was the country’s second richest eco- system, after the Misiones jungle.

Yungas is the home of the “yaguarete”, the largest feline in South America and the only one capable of reproducing on its own.

Ezcurra said that the yaguarete, a breed of jaguar that once inhabited a wide area of Argentina up to the limit with Patagonia, today is reduced to only 200 specimens in Yungas. He warned that “the Norgas project would be the final blow to the species.”

Norgas has produced a three-volume study of the project’s environmental impact. But Greenpeace criticized it for its “lack of objectivity and gross technical errors,” such as the absence of maps of critical and protected areas, and the omission of the preservation of birds and mammals as well as a list of those species.

Ezcurra said that in 1997 Techint, an Argentine firm associated with Tractebel for this project, financed an environmental study by an expert from the Wildlife Foundation, which concluded that the biological corridor of Yungas was a priority conservation zone.

For this reason, both Greenpeace and other environmental groups have launched a campaign to raise awareness and to prevent the authorities from granting approval to Norgas. The environmentalists point out that the project will have a negative impact and is technically unnecessary.

“In order to meet the demand for energy in northern Chile, half the capacity of the pipeline would be enough, and yet the companies are competing to bring cheap gas; that is why they want to build a new pipeline,” said Ezcurra.

Nor Andino has electricity plants in Antofagasta, but the energy is expensive because it is based on oil and coal.

Although only Nor Andino has contracts to sell electricity in that region of Chile, once Gas Atacama finishes the pipeline and is capable to offering Argentine gas to Chile, the provider contracts could be transferred automatically from Nor Andino to Gas Atacama.

For that reason, Nor Andino is pressuring ENARGAS to grant speedy authorization to build the pipeline, so that it can reach Antofagasta before its competitor does, said Ezcurra.

Besides the yaguaretes, Yungas has monkeys, toucans, ocelots, pumas and different kinds of frogs, some of them protected by the International Convention on Trafficking in Endangered Species (CITES), because of their value in studies on global climate change.

In terms of invertebrate species, the German agency GTZ financed in 1993 a study on Yungas that concluded that “in just one of Yungas’ trees, one can find more species of ants than in all of any European country.”

Yungas also has 60 percent of the bird species of the entire country. It is also the home of 350 families of Kolla Indians, some 2, 500 people who have expressed their opposition to the project, because it threatens their cemeteries, agricultural and pasture lands, and archaeological areas of “incalculable cultural value.”

In this sense, the director of Cultural Heritage of the province of Salta, Mario Lazarovich, has pressed ENARGAS to require Nor Andino to provide studies of the cultural impact before any approval of the project and that the companies finance a “salvage” operation of archaeological sites if the pipeline project is approved.