PIURA, a coast department of northern Peru, with area 15,239 sq.m.; pop. (est. 1927) 300,000. The department in cludes mountainous areas in the north (Cerros de Amatope) and east (cordilleran sierra) and a great desert (Sechura) in the south. The chief rivers are the Chira, a permanent stream, and the Piura. Crops are grown with the aid of irrigation as there is rainfall only at intervals of years. Cotton-growing is the leading industry in the irrigated valleys, stock-raising in the sierra. The cultivation of aspero (full-rough cotton) is peculiar to this department, the product of a large bush, and is known as vegetable wool (see PERU : Agriculture). There are gins and factories for making cotton-seed oil and cake; also a crush ing-mill for castor-beans which produces about 20,000 gal. of castor-oil annually. Other crops include rice, sugar, tobacco, maize, potatoes, yuca, beans, cacao and fruits, all of which are consumed locally. Sierran cattle are fattened in the upper valleys. Goats are raised extensively. Charcoal is made from the wood of the algaroba tree. Though mineral deposits are widespread, petroleum is the only one exploited. It now heads the list of Peruvian exports and the only producing oil fields in the republic are in the department of Piura and the adjoining province of Tumbez. They lie along the north-western coast, a narrow belt about 6o m. in length. The two chief operating companies are in Piura; the International Petroleum Corporation, a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company, whose chief field is Negritos, 4o m.
north-west of Paita, produces about 8o% of the national output (1,140,00o tons in 1926) and has a modern refinery at its port, Talara. The Lobitos Oil Company, 1 o m. north of Talara, for merly British, now Peruvian, produced 271,000 tons in 1926, shipped via Talara to the United States and Canada for refining. About 15% of total production is consumed in Peru, largely as crude oil by railways. A standard gauge railway runs from Paita (q.v.), to Piura (58 m.) by way of Sullana, a distributing centre for southern Ecuador, and narrow gauge railways connect the oil-fields with Talara. Roads are under active construction and sections of the coast highway and of the road across the Andes from Paita to the Amazon are finished. Piura, capital of the department, pop. (estimated 1920) 15,000, is on the Piura river, 164 ft. above sea-level. It was founded by Pizarro in 1532 on a slightly different site. It has electric lights, telephone and telegraph, banks, theatres, superior court, secondary schools and an excellent hospital. Catacaos, 6 m. south of the capital, is the centre of the Panama hat industry. Hats are woven from leaves of toquilla palm (Carludovica palmata).