Shell Oil has plans to start drilling for natural gas this July in a rainforest area that Peru's government set aside as a homeland for so-called "uncontacted" indigenous people, inhabited by the Nahua and Kugakopori in the Urubamba River valley, a biodiversity rich area.
Even if - to avoid any possible charges of environmental damage- Shell has vowed to refrain from causing any negative environmental impact, some charges of environmental damage, like alteration of the water and problems in hunting and fishing have already begun to come in.
As Shell itself admits bigger problems can be expected when the extraction of natural gas begins: heavy metal pollution due to waste material from the wells, massive flares in the forest and risk of explosion caused by gas escaping.
Source: Rainforest Action Network Action Alert January/February 1997; InterPress Service, January 30, 1997.