Open Files – Pacific Rubiales

Open Files. An exhaustive investigative report on the lives and works of Latin America's and the world's most controversial personalities. The subject of this week’s investigation is the Pacific Rubiales Corporation and its operations in Colombia. The report shows how the Canadian petroleum exploration and production company arrived in the Puerto Gaitan area with slick promo about creating jobs and raising the standard of living for the workers, and how after a decade of exploitation, it has left the workers in conditions of modern slavery, the water poisoned, and the land fractured by drilling practices cause hourly earthquakes. We meet labor union activists and analysts who detail the damage done by the corporation, its repressive union busting techniques and its creation of a company union. And we also meet the owners of Pacific Rubiales and hear of their relations with Bill Clinton and Alvaro Uribe, the enormous profits that they take out of the company without leaving one barrel of oil in Colombia, and the protection and benefits offered to them first by the Uribe government and now by the government of Juan Manuel Santos. teleSUR