Projects don’t get much more star-crossed than Occidental Petroleum’s quest for oil in northeast Colombia’s Samoré block.

After Colombia’s Environment Ministry signed off four years ago on an Occidental plan to drill there, the U’wa Indians, whose mountain lands overlap a portion of the 500,000-acre (200,000-hectare) exploration area, threatened mass suicide.

Occidental backed down. Now, with another license request pending at the Environment Ministry, the company has seen its project become the backdrop for international reports on the brutal murders of three U.S. citizens assisting the U’wa in their struggle.

Terence Freitas, an environmental scientist from Santa Cruz, California, Ingrid Washinawatok, of the Menominee Indian tribe in Wisconsin, and Lahe’ena’e Gay, a Hawaiian native-rights organizer, were abducted by two hooded members of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia on Feb. 25.

Their blindfolded corpses were found March 4, just across the border in Venezuela. Each had been shot several times in the face.

While news of the murders has unleashed a torrent of criticism of Colombia’s guerrilla movement, it also has focused attention on the plight of the country’s fragile Indian communities—especially its 5,000 U’wa.

The U’wa are an animist, nature-worshipping people who have preserved the ecosystem of the Andean cloud forest to an extent seen in few places in Latin America. They have done so by roaming continually between elevations of 2,000 and 10,000 feet (700 and 3,000 meters) to avoid depleting resources, and by eschewing clear-cutting and cattle ranching.

Said an U’wa communiqué issued in December: “More than one thousand times in more than one thousand different ways we have told the white man that the Earth is our mother, that we cannot sell her, but it appears that he cannot understand…”

Occidental applied for government licenses to drill on the Samoré block in 1992. The company hoped to find reserves comparable to the estimated 2.5 billion barrels British Petroleum is tapping at the vast Cusiana oil field in the state of Casanare.

It was after the Environment Ministry approved the drilling in February 1995 that the Indians threatened to commit mass suicide. Some 20% of the Samoré block overlaps with officially recognized U’wa tribal lands.

Colombia’s two highest courts reached contradictory decisions on whether Occidental had correctly consulted with the U’wa as required by law. And with international NGOs and Indian-rights groups applying enormous pressure, Occidental temporarily backed down in the face of a public relations nightmare.

After a pause, however, the controversy has resumed.

Occidental is now seeking the Environment Ministry’s approval to drill a single Samoré test well that is not within the officially recognized U’wa reservation. At the same time, however, the U’wa are awaiting a government decision on expansion of their reservation to include alleged ancestral lands. It is unclear whether the enlarged U’wa reservation would include the Occidental drilling site.

Supporters of the oil project argue that without new exploration, Colombia will cease to be self-sufficient in oil in the year 2004. They point to industry estimates that discoveries of 1.4 billion barrels in reserves at Samoré would allow the country to produce up to 280,000 additional barrels of oil a day and earn some $14 billion dollars over a 25-year period.

And given Colombia’s punishing unemployment and recession, they say, the country would be foolish not to take advantage of this opportunity. Urban unemployment stands at 15.7%, close to a historic record. Though there are no official figures for rural employment, economists believe it is at least twice as high.

Environmentalists counter that because major oil development would attract thousands of workers and job-seekers to the region, the carefully balanced U’wa world would fall into a tailspin. The pressure on natural resources from clear-cutting for roads and settlements and from increased hunting and fishing would be devastating, they say.

They point to the coca and oil booms in the southern state of Putumayo, which brought a flood of job seekers to the edge of the Kofanes tribal lands. Forests were cut down, roads and homes were built near Indian territory, Indian women wound up as prostitutes and the tribe disintegrated.

Environment Minister Juan Mayr says he is adamant that the U’wa not suffer a similar fate.

“We have to assure the survival of the U’wa traditions and the conservation and proper use of biodiversity that they guarantee,” he told EcoAméricas. “Its our great challenge: On one hand to take into account the possibility of a large oil discovery with important implications for the nation’s economy and, on the other hand, to insure care and respect for the integrity of the culture and the environment.”

Mayr said it was unlikely his ministry would rule on Occidental’s license request for at least another three months.