According to reports in the capitalist media, from 20 to 60 soldiers from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will be the first to be deployed. Over the next couple of years, U.S. troops will be involved in training some 4,000 Colombian soldiers to be part of a rapid-reaction force stationed at key spots along the pipeline. This move, which also includes providing the government with an additional 10 U.S. helicopters, is part of a $94 million package approved by the Bush administration.

This military assistance comes on top of the $1.3 billion deal, known as Plan Colombia, approved by the U.S. Congress in 2000 under the guise of stepping up the war against drug trafficking. Last July Washington shifted to what it describes as counterinsurgency operations, dropping the pretense that its military intervention into the country would be limited to uprooting drugs.

Behind these moves is the U.S. rulers’ drive to gain more control over South America’s vast natural resources, including oil. Washington seeks to decrease its dependency on Mideast oil, shifting over to importing more oil from the Andean region--Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. According to administration estimates, the United States will by 2020 import 62 percent of the oil it uses, up from half today. Nearly half the oil imported by Washington now comes from the Americas, with the three Andean nations providing more than 2 million barrels a day, about 20 percent of U.S. imports.

Besides escalating its military intervention in Colombia, Washington has a military air base in Manta, Ecuador. And it has demonstrated its hostility to the government of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, seeking a more submissive regime in this oil-rich country.

In Colombia, the U.S. company Occidental Petroleum is now producing nearly twice as much oil as last year at its 212 wells. It has also signed contracts recently with the state oil company to explore an additional 9,000 square miles for oil. In the past two years, the Colombian government has signed 60 such contracts to expand the exploration for new oil reserves in the country.

"You’ll see more interest on the part of more companies," stated Larry Meriage, spokesman for Occidental. "Given the fact that here is a significant amount of oil there, and the sheer mass of oil that remains under-explored, there is considerable optimism."

The pipeline around which many of these troops are to be stationed transports crude oil from the Caño Limón fields in the northeast region of Arauca to the Coveñas Port in the Caribbean. The Caño Limón oil reserve is the second largest in the country, producing nearly 25 percent of Colombia’s oil exports. It is jointly operated by Occidental Petroleum and Ecopetrol, Colombia’s state-owned oil company.

Colombia’s new president, Alvaro Uribe, has already declared Arauca to be a security zone where military commanders can conduct searches without warrants and impose curfews on the civilian population living in region. Uribe has also announced plans for the deployment of Colombian troops dressed in blue helmets with the approval of the United Nations to ostensibly escort 30,000 displaced families to their place of origin.  
 
 
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