Risky Business.(Colombian guerillas)

In a remote jungle clearing, several dozen Colombian guerrillas in camouflage fatigues gnaw on pieces of stewed rodent and sip a hot brew made from sugar cane. These men belong to the National Liberation Army (ELN); it's the smaller of Colombia's two rebel groups, but considered public enemy No. 1 in the boardrooms of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. ELN guerrillas have been targeting the company's facilities in Colombia since the mid-1980s. In a single three-month period last year, they staged 75 attacks against a vital Occidental pipeline. A rebel leader named Comandante Guillermo claims the ELN is acting on behalf of poor workers and farmers in oil-rich Arauca state, near the border with Venezuela, whose resources are being exploited by the company's drilling operations. "Occidental has taken our oil and left nothing behind but misery," says Guillermo. Occidental says it has a large social-investment program. The ELN demands a massive increase in that spending, arguing that despite the oil wealth, much of the area remains poor.

Now both Washington and Bogota aim to stop the attacks. Under a recently approved $94 million aid program, 20 U.S. Special Forces advisers began arriving in Arauca state last month. They'll train two Colombian Army brigades charged with defending the 772-kilometer-long pipeline that delivers Oxy crude to a distant port on the Caribbean coastline. Colombia is the eighth largest source of U.S. oil imports, and guaranteeing a steady flow of crude shipments from the South American country now ranks alongside the twin wars against drugs and terrorism as a top U.S. objective there. But critics question whether the Bush administration should put taxpayer dollars at the service of a private company whose Colombian contractors still pay millions in "protection money" to the rebels. "It is a clear example of how American energy corporations have hijacked U.S. foreign policy and now threaten to get us deeper into a military quagmire," says Kevin Koenig of the Washington-based Indian-rights group Amazon Watch.

Occidental executives argue that what's good for the company will also be good for Colombia and the United States. The Bush administration, eager to reduce its dependence on Mideast energy suppliers, would be happy to boost oil imports from Latin America. And petroleum is certainly vital to Colombia: oil exports generate about one ...