‘I’ve seen the dark, fat grease stuck to the leaves’: oil and gas encroach on Peru’s uncontacted peoples

Above the canopy of the tallest trees that vie for sunlight in the depths of the Peruvian Amazon, gas flares shoot into the sky. Below, Julio Cusurichi, 53, can see the thick, dark grease that clings to the leaves and the toxins leaking into the streams.

"Oil and gas projects are coming closer and closer. They are expanding into new lands," says Cusurichi, a member of the Shipibo-Conibo people, a Goldman prize winner and one of Peru 's foremost Indigenous leaders. "Our territory is our life, but the government is auctioning off plots. It is a great invasion with a grave impact."

Oil and gas have been extracted from some of Peru's most biologically diverse territories for decades. Now, researchers warn, companies are expanding further into the lands of some of the last uncontacted Indigenous peoples .

Peru is home to one of the world's largest populations of "peoples in isolation and initial contact" (Piaci), estimated at 7,500 by the government . Their territories comprise some of the most intact areas of the Amazon. Yet, recent analysis by Earth Insight has found that Peru's current and proposed oil and gas blocks overlap with 20% – or 1.6m hectares (3.95m acres) – of reserves for these communities.

Researchers warn of devastating effects on health and the species-rich environment, with frequent spills coating the lush rainforest in black sludge. The consequences of this pollution are still being investigated, but initial conclusions are devastating .

In Peru, women report nausea and miscarriages, while men talk about developing skin rashes and unexplained illnesses after oil and gas mining begins. According to Cusurichi, a health crisis is under way among uncontacted Amazonian peoples due to large-scale fossil fuel exploitation.

In 2016, Peru's health ministry sampled 1,168 people living near one of the country's biggest oilfields. They found half had toxic metals – such as mercury, cadmium, arsenic and lead – in their bodies at rates higher than those recommended as safe by the World Health Organization.

Exposure to arsenic and cadmium can cause various cancers, and cadmium can lead to kidney disease and reproductive problems. Continued exposure to mercury can cause neurological damage.

"Whenever oil companies – or any type of extractivist company – come, they bring diseases. We are condemned with sicknesses, nausea and open sores," says Fany Kuiru Castro, a Colombian Indigenous leader and chief of the coordinating body of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (Coica). "They are putting the life and the cultural existence of Indigenous people at risk. It's a silent genocide."

New roads built for the operations also open up remote areas to outsiders such as illegal loggers and drug traffickers, further increasing the risk of disease. In 1984, more than 50% of previously uncontacted Nahua people died from newly introduced diseases after oil exploration on their land. As one researcher said , the growing presence of oil and gas operations makes for "a very crowded forest".

The contamination of rivers is another severe concern, as water, crucial to the wellbeing of Indigenous communities, is affected.

Between 2000 and 2019, there were at least 474 oil spills in the Peruvian Amazon, mostly from corroded pipelines and operational failures. After two oil barges collided in March near the Pacaya-Samiria national reserve, in the Loreto region, one witness described "chaos" as local people used their bare hands to "scoop up the oil" from the water.

Tony Mori, a Peruvian Amazon botanical specialist, warned in 2016 that the impact of the oil spills could mean that communities in Loreto would "have no fish nor land animals for food, nor fresh water to drink".

The flora and fauna are at risk, too. Peru is home to the second-largest area of the Amazon rainforest after Brazil and has more than 12,000 species, including jaguars, sloths, river dolphins and macaws. It also plays a vital role in regulating the climate, storing vast amounts of carbon.

Yet Peru's Amazon has already been weakened , losing more than 2.7m hectares (6.67m acres) of forest between 2001 and 2021, according to official figures.

Oil and gas projects are a significant driver for deforestation, mainly as new access roads, drilling platforms and pipelines are built. Scientists have warned that the forest is approaching a "tipping point" , beyond which it could degrade into grassland.

Edith Espejo, Earth Insight's programme manager, says: "Adding fossil fuel infrastructure to these territories is adding tinder to an Amazonia that is already on fire."

Oil exploration began in Peru in the 1920s and there was a production boom in the 1970s. Subsequent decades have seen an increase in the number of large-scale projects, making it one of the most oil-dependent countries in Latin America today.

That is despite the International Energy Agency saying that countries must stop new oil and gas projects to avoid aggravating the climate crisis.

The Peruvian government determines specific areas, or "blocks", for hydrocarbon activities , which are then leased to state and multinational energy companies for exploration. The Peruvian environment ministry and the ministry for energy and mines did not respond to requests for comment.

In the foreword of Peru's mining and metals investment guide 2024-25 , foreign minister Elmer Schialer wrote that "today, in modern Peru, mining constitutes almost 15% of the country's GDP" and that the increase in the country's mining production is "vital for the potential growth of our economy, the improvement of working conditions, and the family income of workers".

The report describes the Amazon as a region "rich in petroleum and forest resources".

Last year, a legislative proposal aimed to overlay 31 oil blocks on 435 Indigenous communities, compromising the protections of dozens of forest communities living in voluntary isolation, according to a report published by Ojo Público and Instituto de Bien Común .

Espejo says that comprehensive environmental and social impact assessments were not conducted during the creation of these promotional oil and gas blocks, and that the responsibility is handed to private companies after they have already bought the lots.

"Oil and gas blocks are threatening 20% of Piaci reserves. If these reserves were truly protected, then the percentage would be zero," Espejo says.

While Peru has established a process of "previous consultation", Indigenous communities do not have the power to veto a project on their lands. Cusurichi believes the government and oil companies consider the Amazon "uninhabited". "They don't see the Indigenous people," he says. "They create great conflict."

Cusurichi says oil and gas companies will usually build a water treatment plant as part of their investment, but these often only work for a few months and cease to operate when the companies leave.

Castro says: "They arrive, extract and then leave. We are left with nothing."

Experts say that the new forest and wildlife law , known by critics as the "anti-forest law", may make matters worse. Formally announced in January, the law pardoned all historical illegal deforestation of areas cleared for agriculture before January 2024 and reversed any future legal constraints.

Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, says that while Peru has well advanced frameworks for Indigenous consultation, it suffers from turbulent politics and a "dispersion of responsibilities", which leaves vast regions ungoverned. "There is a real lack of accountability," he says, aggravated by the country's "dangerously" decentralised systems.

"The intentions are there, but there are a series of structural issues that fail to protect Indigenous communities," Sabatini says. "There are committed public servants who advocate for rights, but because of the political situation, the corruption, and [the lack of] reach of the state in these territories, they are simply marginal."

Leaders fear the so-called "amnesty" could incentivise more deforestation, while some experts add that it comes amid a flurry of harmful amendments.

Julia Urrunaga, head of the Peru programme for the Environmental Investigation Agency, says: "In the last year, under the new administration, several regulations have come out to weaken environmental and human rights protections across the country.

"They are changing laws, so irresponsible investors do whatever they want and do it with impunity."

Cusurichi says he feels that Indigenous people "are being deceived" by officials and mining firms.