News and AnalysIs for

This week the USO reported on its national assembly and its plans to create an occupational health department. More important is a news item on hearings in Villavicencio on the social and environmental impacts of the mining and hydrocarbons sectors in the department of Meta. A left-wing senator, Alexander López Maya told the hearing that working conditions in Puerto Gaitan were typical of a concentration camp. That’s strange considering that Pacific Rubiales told a conference on sustainable communities and petroleum last Friday that it had no community or labor relations issues in Puerto Gaitan. Although the truth is no doubt somewhere between zero and the Gulag archipelago, we are inclined to think it very much closer to the company’s point of view than one reported by the USO.