Key Colombia oil pipeline out after rebel sabotage
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Colombia's second-largest crude oil export
pipeline, crippled nearly 100 times last year by leftist rebels, was out
of action
again after the first attack of 2001, state oil firm Ecopetrol said on
Sunday.
A spokesman told Reuters the pipeline was hit by dynamite at 4 p.m. on
Saturday
some 53 miles (84 kilometers) west of the Cano Limon oil field near the
Venezuelan border.
Cano Limon is operated by U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Corp.
The spokesman had no details of levels of reserves or for how long the
220,000
barrel-per-day (bpd) capacity line would be out of action. Repairs in the
past
have taken several days to several weeks.
The spokesman blamed National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, believed to
have
been behind most of at least 97 recorded attacks on the pipeline last year,
for the
sabotage.
The 485-mile (780-kilometer) oil duct, in the northeastern province of
Arauca --
a leftist guerrilla stronghold -- has long been a target of sabotage by
the two main
rebel groups in Colombia's four-decades-old conflict.
They bomb it to protest what they see as foreign corporate dominance of
Colombia's oil industry.
The ELN is fighting the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
and far-right paramilitary gangs in a conflict that has claimed 35,000
civilian lives
and displaced 2 million people since 1990.
Continued sabotage of the pipeline has cost the government and Occidental
hundreds of millions of dollars and caused large-scale environmental pollution,
industry sources say.
The Cano Limon pipeline began operation in 1986. Oil is Colombia's largest
export earner.