Perupetro, the oil and gas-licensing arm of the Peruvian government, confirmed plans yesterday [11 Feb 2010] to auction another 19 hydrocarbon concessions in the Amazon rainforest. With these new concessions, two-thirds of the Peruvian Amazon are now earmarked for oil and gas drilling… Peru's national Amazonian indigenous organization, AIDESEP, issued a statement rejecting the new bidding round while ongoing social conflicts remain unresolved... “[O]pening of the Amazon to extractive resource projects without the free prior and informed consent of indigenous communities prompted major protests last year…," said Mitch Anderson [from] Amazon Watch…"The government still has not addressed the issues of consultation and poor safeguards at the core of the protest…All the new concessions overlap titled indigenous lands and over half of all indigenous territories across the Amazon now lie within an oil or gas concession… Daysi Zapata, president of AIDESEP [said] "[The government] has not respected our right to choose our own model of development..."