By KEVIN SPURGAITIS
Ecuador is well endowed with breathtaking panoramas. Its virgin territory spans lush jungles, foothills and highlands, through pristine lakes, rivers and exotic thermal baths. But an environmental disaster is waiting to happen here, activists say — one endangering the country’s rich biodiversity and its indigenous groups’ primordial way of life. The reported threat begins in the eastern Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest and snakes through the Andes Mountains, terminating in the Pacific. It bisects 94 seismic fault lines, passes six active volcanoes and crosses seven environmentally protected areas.
Canadian oil giant EnCana has long drawn ire for its Amazonian drilling operations and its lead role in the construction of a new 500-km-long oil pipeline, known as the OCP (Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados). Capped for nearly 10 years due to opposition, the OCP pipeline was finally completed in 2003 by a consortium of seven international oil companies.
Reportedly, to make the US$1.1 billion plus-pipeline financially viable for companies, 450,000 barrels of oil must flow per day. The rainforest will have to be opened up to additional oil exploration and production in the southern half of Ecuador’s virtually untapped Amazon Basin. However, a single rupture in the pipeline could potentially spill 3050 barrels of oil, according to the OCP’s own projections.
In Ecuador’s Amazon, oil pipelines have burst before, producing man-made pools of toxic crude. There have been at least 30 major spills in the country — the equivalent to 400,000 barrels of oil, almost double that spilled by the Exxon Valdez, according to GlobalAware, a co-operative of international writers and academics promoting social development and the environment. Ecuador’s own oil pipeline, SOTE, once snapped, polluting the Sucus-San Juan River and creating a ‘black stain’ over the mountainous region.
In 1993, representatives of 30,000 indigenous people and campesinos filed a landmark lawsuit against Texaco oil company in the United States. According to prosecutors, between 1964 and 1992, Texaco — now ChevronTexaco — spilled 16 million gallons of crude and 20 billion gallons of contaminated water in the northeastern provinces of Sucumbos and Orellana. The local communities are demanding US$1.5 billion in compensation. Last year, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York pushed the case back to Ecuador.
Tapping rainforests
Drilling is popular in the northern Amazonian provinces. Here, the petroleum industry paved an estimated one million hectares of rainforest with highways and roads. Carved out of the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve is EnCana’s oil concession-block. The Alberta-based company is a merger between Alberta Energy Company Ltd. and PanCanadian Energy. It is the largest North American independent oil and gas producer — worth more than US $18 billion two years ago. It is even listed in the portfolios of “socially responsible” investment groups, such as the Ethical Funds Company.
But as a result of Encana’s drilling in Ecuador, subsistence-based livelihoods have been directly threatened, according to GlobalAware and Ecological Action, an Ecuador-base conservationist group. Generally, deforestation is often coupled with the destruction of soils, loss of crops, and the death of fish and animal species. Now, with their major water supply for drinking, washing and fishing now polluted with petroleum, denizens of oil-producing areas are reporting frequent skin problems, cancer and birth defects, as well as malnutrition. The rate of respiratory illness is also high because of the torching of excess natural gas at refineries.
OCP has provided consultations with Ecuadorians in the past, but they often refused to entertain questions and enter into a dialogue with affected people, according to Dr. Robert Goodland, former chief of the Environmental Department of the World Bank.
In September 2002, Goodland completed an independent report on the OCP for Amazon Watch and Environmental Defense. In it, he contested claims that the project was adhering to World Bank guidelines. Alternative routes for the OCP pipeline were not considered, the now-retired tropical ecologist concluded. The OCP’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) — carried out by the conglomerate’s own environmental coordinator — proceeded the pipeline’s construction.
However, Goodland’s report was disputed by Bernardo Tobar, executive president of OCP in Ecuador. In an interview with World Investment News, he maintained the OCP is still Ecuador’s “main project,” bringing in US$1.4 billion in investment and spinning off major job opportunities.
Tobar said: “The sponsors (of OCP) were comprised of leaders who were committed to contributing to Ecuador’s development, in spite of all the risks … Ecuador is a difficult place to do business, in the sense that the country is still maturing and evolving.”
Political determination is needed to fix the “institutional weaknesses of Ecuador,” he maintained. “Ecuador should establish a policy for a future we can all agree on. In order to reach consensus, I believe that we need to bring together all major political parties, minority groups, civil society, economic agents and government officials in order to set a minimum framework to move ahead together.”
EnCana representatives would not comment on opposition to the OCP.
Latin America now pumps more oil to the United States than the Middle East. In 2002, Ecuador’s oil sector accounted for 40 per cent of all export earnings. Considered an important world energy producer, Ecuador is one of Latin America’s largest crude oil exporters. It is also one of the most economically depressed. Poverty doubled between 1995 and 2000 (from 34 to 67 per cent of the population), especially among women, Afro-Ecuadorians and indigenous people. Natural and man-made disasters further destabilized the country this past decade. In order to qualify for assistance from the International Monetary Fund and reduce its foreign debt, Ecuador genially invited foreign-owned oil operations, considered the “engines of economic growth” — and permitted the OCP.
“There’s been such an extended cooperation between the OCP consortium and the government, that a lot of steps have been overlooked,” says Nadja Drost, a GlobalAware spokesperson, who is completing a documentary on the OCP. In March, she embarked on a 12-city Canadian tour, speaking to universities and NGOs, as well as business analysts and private investors within the social investment community.
“It’s a really devastating situation (in the Ecuadorian Amazon),” Drost says. “The OCP pipeline severely impacts the lives hundreds of people, and will continue to do so for the next 20 years.”
She added: “History has shown us that oil development has done nothing to benefit the Ecuadorian economy, because while the government has received some of the revenue, it has completely mismanaged it, and in more than 30 years of oil development, all we’ve seen is soaring poverty rates and skyrocketing external debt.”
Indigenous people’s land
Ecuadorian activist, Louie Merino, no longer wants to see families destroyed in his country. Merino is the Municipal Director of Environment in Tarapoa, also home to EnCana’s field headquarters. The former biology professor cites case after case of injustice, intimidation and “chequebook development” by the Canadian oil company. In a GlobalAware transcript, he explains how EnCana works: When a farm is contaminated by their installations, they simply buy it — cheap. If a school gets in their way, they buy all the farms in the area until there are no students left. And if local people protest, they are harassed by the army.
“I think all human beings have the right to live in a clean environment. And oil doesn’t allow this. Instead, it damages,” Merino told CNT. “It’s important that the Canadian people know what one of its companies is doing in my country,”
The indigenous people’s land is grabbed for as little as a bag of bonbons, or as much as US$1,000 per family. EnCana also distributes pens, erasers and notebooks — sometimes even a corporate poncho or a referee’s whistle. These are treasures in a very impoverished region, according to Merino.
However, most local populations are not placated by “token charms.” Most say they are tired of living like “beggars in a bag of gold.” In Sarayacu, the hotbed of the indigenous anti-oil movement, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) and the alliance of the Achuar, Shiwiar, Shuar, Zapara and Quichua indigenous populations, have waged a “nonviolent” campaign for their self-determination.
“Let the military come in, because we will defend to the last,” the Quichua leader told the New York Times. “As long as we live here, we will defend our rights.”
Faced with mulish resistance by indigenous, environmental and human rights groups, Ecuador President Lucio Gutiérrez pledged military protection of oil companies. In March 2003, increasing opposition to the OCP led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the northern province of Sucumbios.Treetop protests along the OCP pipeline route were broken up by police, resulting in the eviction of 17 activists. In the city of Lago Agrio, helicopters dropped tear gas into crowds, causing two children to die from asphyxiation. It is reported the OCP-bolstered police force intimidates dissidents with wooden clubs, stones and machetes — sometimes during the night.
Nonetheless, opposition to crude oil operations continues mushrooming, says Nathalie Weemaels, an engineer and campaign coordinator with Ecological Action. Based in Quito, she monitored the OCP’s sluggish construction for two years. The Quichua community of Sarayaku is emblematic of the resistance, according to Weemaels. They are joined by the Achuar, Shuar and Quichua nationalities in the provinces of Pastaza, Napo and Morona Santiago.
“As the government doesn’t answer indigenous peoples’ demands, they’ve got to find new strategies to be heard and respected. It’s part of their struggle.”
Injunctions and lawsuits, she says, haven’t been very effective, mainly because of a corrupt legal system.” Indigenous opponents of the OCP have, instead, sabotaged oil operations — and some say their own cause — by vandalizing rigs and kidnapping contractors. Weemaels hopes the intervention of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission will birth better results.
“Major oil companies should leave Ecuador because their activities here don’t meet with the environmental and social standards they claim to follow.
Ecuador should declare a moratorium on new oil exploration in protected areas and indigenous territories, Weemaels argues. “It would allow the people that are living in the Amazon to develop new economical strategies that wouldn’t affect their future.”
Two of the OCP’s major lending institutions, Westdeutsche Landesbank of Dusseldorf (WestLB) and Citibank, are now protested in 24 countries. In Canada, the Toronto Environmental Alliance, Greenpeace Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Sierra Club of Canada have all urged EnCana to withdraw from the controversial OCP.
Drost says: “We need to concern ourselves with the way Canadian companies conduct themselves abroad under the Canadian flag. We should be concerned because it is our hunger for oil that’s caused an ecological time bomb to tick away in the Ecuadorian Amazon.”
Originally published in the Catholic New Times, May 2004
