A BP logo photographed in London on May 12, 2021 (AFP)

Declassified UK has uncovered files in Colombia's capital, Bogotá, that shed insight into British oil company BP's financial connections with the Colombian military's human rights violations in the 1990s.

According to the information, not only did BP support military forces around its oil installations in the department of Casanare but also paid for Colombia's "national defense activities" throughout the country, working closely with General Ivaro Velandia Hurtado in 1994, then-commander of Colombia's infamous sixteenth brigade, on "conflict resolution" in Casanare.

Velandia, a military intel specialist, has been accused of participating in a series of heinous human rights violations, including the kidnapping, torture, and murder of a social activist in 1987, as well as collusion with a Colombian death squad.

BP established a new "frontier" strategy of high-risk, high-reward oil exploration in the late 1980s, with the goal of reversing a gradual loss in its oil reserves, taking the company to Colombia, which had a liberalizing economy.

The Colombian military participated in the widespread suppression of the country's protest movements.

BP stated in 1991 that it had discovered oil in Casanare, a zone some 100 miles north of Bogotá. It would turn out to be BP's largest oil finding in over two decades, as well as the company's largest ever in Latin America.

In 1992, UK trade minister Tim Sainsbury met John Browne, a managing director and later chief executive of BP. Browne called BP's discovery "major", adding that “reserves were unlikely to be less than two billion barrels of oil."

Sainsbury pledged that the “FCO [Foreign Office], and the British ambassador in Bogota, would do anything we could to help BP operate smoothly in Colombia," making the oil fields a top priority to safeguard.

Attacks on the Occidental Petroleum infrastructure from 1985 and 1997, in rejection of the company's presence on Colombian territory, with militants blowing up the company's pipeline 460 times, according to a company official, led BP to establish a security plan including sponsoring and coordinating with the Colombian military while subsidizing "community projects" in Casanare.

According to the new records, BP's head of Western-Hemisphere South, David Harding, addressed a letter to Colombia's mines and energy minister, Dr. Guido Nule Amn, in January 1993 where he expressed concern for "advance tax or royalty payments" on oil activities despite BP's “continued active involvement in community affairs and support of the Casanare military forces."

Those military troops were most likely referring to the Colombian army's sixteenth brigade, a specialty group formed in 1992 to safeguard oil interests that have since been implicated in a string of human rights atrocities.

According to the files, Harding suggested to Amn that instead of making advance tax or royalty payments, an installment loan could be used to "assist the Colombian Government at this difficult time."

Harding offered up to $10 million "as a military or police loan for activities that specifically serve to reinforce the support and defense of our current operations in the Cusiana area," home to BP's key oil installations.

A further $5 million was granted to strengthen the work "by the community affairs department in the Cusiana area."

Funding the armed forces

The head of the firm also offered $3 million for "national defense activities, as deemed appropriate by the Colombian government."

BP's financing arrangements in Colombia, therefore, extended beyond paying the military forces surrounding its activities to include statewide security operations.

According to the Andean Commission of Jurists, “of the political murders in which a perpetrator could be identified…, approximately 56 percent were committed by state agents, 12 percent by paramilitary groups allied with them..."

Therefore, in the year BP helped fund Colombia's national defense, the military was responsible for 68% of all political killings in the country.

BP paid a total of $312,000 to the sixteenth brigade between May 1996 and August 1997.

Michael Gillard wrote articles where he divulged that BP reached out to a private security company Defense Systems Limited to train the Colombian police in counter-insurgency tactics.

Colombian Senator Iván Cepeda conducted an investigation in 2015 that indicated that a consortium of oil firms, including BP, continued to pay the sixteenth brigade into the 2000s.

The investigation also brought to light how in February 1994, Phil Mead, BP's operations manager in the nation, thanked Brigadier General Alvaro Velandia Hurtado for his "special collaboration in conflict resolution with the El Morro Community" in a letter.

The El Morro Association organization in Casanare had initiated its first civic strike against BP one month before to protest the company's inability to offer jobs and real social benefits to the region. Protesters blocked any equipment from reaching BP's Casanare installations for two weeks.

Carlos Arregui, a civilian participating in the blockade, was killed in front of his children in April 1995.

Prior to his death, he blamed BP for the increased repression in Casanare. According to his wife, Arregui believed BP was behind the threats, while his son, Rubiel, condemned the region's "macabre alliance" of oil corporations, the army's sixteenth brigade, and paramilitary death squads.

Oil firms behind executions

Valendia's participation in the El Morro talks reflects intimidation rather than dispute settlement, given his involvement in multiple human rights crimes around the country.

In one instance, Velandia was charged with participating in the attack and arrest of a trade unionist called Armando Calle in 1983.

In 1991, three years before BP began working with Velandia, a Colombian sergeant testified that Velandia was behind the kidnapping and murder of Nydia Erika Bautista, a Colombian social activist and M-19, a Guerilla movement member.

Bautista was last seen in 1987 when several men forced her into a Jeep in Bogota. Her body was found in 1990, showing evidence of possible sexual assault and torture.

In the first-ever dismissal of a Colombian general over human rights crimes, Velandia was let go from his military duties in 1995 for his role in Bautista’s murder after the prosecutor concluded he knew and approved of the plan to kill Bautista.

The prosecutor at the time still feared for his safety and fled the country and Velandia was allowed back into the military in 2002 on a technicality.

In February 2002, Gilberto Torres, a former head of the Oil Workers Union (USO) in Casanare and an employee of BP's partner Ecopetrol, was abducted and tormented by paramilitaries.

After global outrage, he was released 42 days later, making him one of only two Colombian union activists to be kidnapped by paramilitary organizations to be released.

Torres says BP and Ocensa (a joint venture controlled by BP, Ecopetrol, and others) were involved in his kidnapping.

Paramilitary leader Josue Dario Orjuela Martz, one of Torres' kidnappers, said in court that the oil firms in Casanare had “asked us to execute this man… This man held too many shutdowns, too many unions, too many strikes."

Torres told Declassified UK that “I am a faithful witness to the activities of the oil industry at that time, as well as a victim in terms of my human and fundamental rights on the part of the multinational oil companies, including Ecopetrol and BP."

He added that the newly surfaced documents will allow the public to see "how the capitalist and economic interests of BP – the jewel of the British crown – have prevailed over human rights, the environment, peasant communities, social organizations, trade unionists, and especially human life. With utopic hope, BP will be judged for its crimes."