The diffusivity of oxygen in silicon was measured for several different processing ambients. Relatively large differences were found, indicating a significant interaction between point defects and oxygen transport in silicon. When this interaction is considered along with the influence of point defects upon oxygen precipitation, previously reported in the literature, the overall intrinsic gettering situation is seen to be a combination of various point defect—oxygen interactions. Furthermore, under certain circumstances point defects grown-in during wafer manufacture are found to be most important, while under other conditions point defects introduced during wafer processing are dominant. In this presentation, these various interactions are discussed along with their implications for device processing.