Peruvians sue Oxy, claiming pollution

Members of indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon region sued Occidental Petroleum Corp. on Thursday, claiming the oil company’s operations caused pollution that has sickened residents and killed a 6-year-old boy.

The potential class-action lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, was brought by Tomas Maynas Carijano, identified as a spiritual leader among the Achuar people in northeastern Peru, and 24 others who were not identified by name. Ten of the plaintiffs were children, including “John Doe 12,” the deceased boy.

The group, backed by Earth- Rights International and the Venice-based law firm of Schonbrun DeSimone Seplow Harris & Hoffman, seeks unspecified damages, restitution, medical monitoring and disgorgement of profit.

Richard Kline, spokesman for Westwood-based Occidental, said the company “will evaluate the claims and the lawsuit.” But he added, “It contains numerous inflammatory statements ... unfounded allegations and unsupported conclusions. We have no scientific data of any negative health impacts resulting from our former operations in Peru.”

Occidental, which drew oil from the Corrientes River region in Peru starting in the 1970s, sold the operations to Argentine oil company Pluspetrol in 1999. The U.S. firm still owns drilling rights to 6.3 million acres in the country, blocks that it tried to sell late last year in a deal that later collapsed.

When Pluspetrol took over the Peruvian operations, Kline said, “they assumed all obligations for past, present and future operating conditions” at the sites.

EarthRights International and the Achuar people don’t see it that way, and last week representatives made their views known by protesting alongside several celebrities outside Occidental’s annual shareholders meeting.

Pluspetrol was not included in the suit because last year it agreed to make its operations less harmful and clean up the pollution it caused, the groups said.

elizabeth.douglass@latimes.com