Indigenous Mapuche occupied four oil wells in the Vaca Muerta region in the southwestern Argentine province of Neuquén on July 16 to protest a $1 billion agreement between the state-controlled Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) oil company and the California-based Chevron Corporation to drill for oil in the area's shale deposits. (In an earlier item we wrote erroneously that the drilling was for natural gas.) The Mapuche say that the drilling, which uses the controversial method known as hydrofracking, will damage the local environment, and that the agreement was made without the required prior consultation with the indigenous communities. The protesters were also expressing solidarity with indigenous Ecuadorians who won a $19 billion judgment in 2011 against Chevron for environmental damage. The company refuses to pay.

US intelligence agencies have carried out spying operations on telecommunications in at least 14 Latin American countries, according to a series of articles the Brazilian national daily O Globo began publishing on July 7. Based on classified documents leaked by former US intelligence technician Edward Snowden, the articles reported that the main targets were Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. The US also spied "constantly, but with less intensity," on Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela, the newspaper said. Brazil and Colombia, a major US ally, have both officially demanded explanations from the US.

Iraq unveiled an ambitious energy strategy June 12, aiming to raise $6 trillion from oil and gas sales by 2030. The Integrated National Energy Strategy would see Iraq invest some $620 billion in the sector over nearly 20 years, ramping up oil production to 4.5 million barrels per day by the end of next year, from around 3.5 million now. Iraq sits atop the world's fourth largest proven reserves of conventional crude, with about 143.1 billion barrels. Oil revenues make up 95% of the country's budget. (AFP, AP, June 12)

On June 5, the Governing Counil of Ayllus of Cochabamba, a coordinating body of traditional indigenous authorities, met in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba to denounce what they charged are plans by Vice President Álvaro García Linera to open the country's protected areas to oil and mineral interests. The statement said the government is preparing "new incentives for companies to begin intense exploration in oil areas that are superimposed on the national parks and on our ancestral territories and titled TCOs," or Original Communal Lands. 

Some 30 protesters crashed the opening of the sixth Expominas trade fair at the Quito Exhibition Center April 3, where Ecuador's government sought to win new investors for the mineral and oil sectors. The protesters, mostly women, interrupted the event's inaugural speech with an alternative rendition of the song "Latinoamérica" by the Puerto Rican hip-hop outfit Calle 13, with lyrics referencing places in the country threatened by mining: "You cannot buy Intag, you cannot buy Mirador, you can't buy Kimsacocha, you can't buy my Ecuador." The activists wore t-shirts with the slogan: "Responsible mining, tall tale" (literally, cuento chino, Chinese tale). (Tegantai, April 3)

At least 163 were reported dead March 28 in clashes at Okello, in Pibor county of South Sudan's Jonglei state, pitting government troops against a rebel force whose commander David Yau Yau is said to be among the slain. (See map.) South Sudan accuses Khartoum of supporting the rebels, with military spokesman Col. Philip Aguer saying a seized airstrip was used for arms drops. He suggested Sudan is arming the rebellion in a bid to block the South's plans to build an oil pipeline through Ethiopia to a port in Djibouti. Aguer said the South's military, the SPLA, would continue to "deal with the militia group." (The Guardian, March 28) A Kenyan route for the pipeline has also been broached, with the aim of freeing the South from having to export oil through Khartoum's territory.

Reprisals are feared in a sensitive part of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest following an attack by "uncontacted" tribesmen in which two members of the Waorani indigenous people were killed March 5. According to a preliminary investigation by the Orellana province public prosecutor's office, the victims were speared to death while walking near their village of Yarentaro, located along the Maxus Oil Road—within both Yasuní National Park, and the Bloc 16 oil exploration division, being developed by Repsol. The victims were identified as a Waorani elder and his wife. A statement by the Organization of the Waorani Nationality of Orellana (ONWO) said the attackers were from an isolated band of the Tageiri-Taromenane, which has long had territorial disputes with the closely related Waorani. The Taromenane are said to be a branch of the Waorani who spurned contact with evangelical missionaries in the 1950s by retreating deeper into the forest, and now roam the interior Yasuní as nomads.

Burma's persecuted Muslim Rohingya people were in the news again over the weekend with the Thai navy's denial that its forces opened fire on a group of refugees off the country's southwestern coast last month, killing at least two. Survivors said that Thai naval troops fired a boat of around 20 refugees off Thailand's Phang Nga province on Feb. 22, as they jumped into the water to escape custody. "Navy personnel fired into the air three times and told us not to move," a refugee told Human Rights Watch (HRW). "But we were panicking and jumped off the boat, and then they opened fire at us in the water." More than 100,000 Rohingyas have been displaced since ethnic violence broke out in western Burma last year. Burma refuses to recognize the Rohingya as citizens and labels the minority of about 800,000 as "illegal" immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh—which in turn disavows them as nationals.  (BBC News, March 15; Press TV, March 13)