Riau villagers end Caltex blockade peacefully
Riau villagers end Caltex blockade peacefully
Haidir Anwar Tanjung, The Jakarta Post, Pekanbaru, Riau
Around 400 villagers ended on Friday a five-day blockade of an
oil field in Riau province belonging to U.S. company PT Caltex
Pacific Indonesia after local police interceded in the dispute.
The protest started on Monday with the villagers demanding
road improvements in Pinang, close to the site of Caltex's oil
field in Rokan Hilir regency.
"The blockade by local residents was to put pressure on Caltex
to improve the Pinang road. But we don't accept their method,"
spokesman of the company Hanafi Kadir told The Jakarta Post in
the Riau capital of Pekanbaru.
However, he said the protesters removed the blockade on the
Pinang field on Friday after police moved to disperse them by
arranging negotiations between their community leaders and the
company.
Rokan Hilir Police chief Comr. Erwan was quoted as telling the
protesting villagers that Caltex would not be willing to
negotiate with them if the company remained under pressure.
Hanafi said Caltex would consider the demand from the
villagers after its operations in the Pinang field had returned
to normal.
The company's 24 oil wells there resumed operations later on
Friday after the protest ended, he added.
During the protest, residents from Kubu village had ordered
workers at the oil field to stop work and abandon the area.
The protesters accused Caltex of failing to make good on its
promise to rebuild the 40-kilometer road, which is an important
transportation route for locals.
The road linking Simpang Kubu and Banko had seriously been
damaged due to floods. The damage was also blamed on large
trucks, which regularly pass the road to transport palm oil and
other plantation products.
Caltex said it had actually started road improvements in
Pinang, but later stopped the project after it faced certain
problems, including the alleged blackmailing of workers by local
thugs.
Hanafi also said that some spare parts of heavy equipment
owned by Caltex's partner were stolen by local villagers during
the road improvement project.
"If the spare parts are not returned, how can we resume the
project?" he added.
He claimed his company had improved the overall infrastructure
in Riau by building roads, schools and a sports stadium, as well
as providing other assistance to locals.
However, he said there were indications that these
contributions were often misused for the personal gain of certain
people or groups.
The spokesman said the five-day blockade caused Caltex, a unit
of U.S.-based Chevron Texaco Corp., to lose around 7,200 barrels
of crude oil production.
The company is the country's largest crude oil producer, with
an average production of around 630,000 barrels per day.
Similar blockades had taken place frequently at Caltex's oil
fields, disrupting their production in Riau. Protesters have
complained about the few benefits they gained from the extraction
of natural resources in their area.
Although new regional autonomy laws were implemented in 2000,
granting local governments greater control over revenues from
natural resources, critics say much of this money is lost to
corruption, leaving little to improve the welfare of villagers
throughout the nation.