Workers recently completed the construction of a new oil platform in an area of dense Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, close to where some of the world’s last uncontacted indigenous peoples live.
Crews are drilling into one of Earth’s most environmentally important ecosystems — one that stores massive amounts of carbon, which warms the planet. They are gradually approaching a no-go zone set up to protect indigenous groups. But it was discovered that some of the largest oil reserves in the country are also present in these indigenous areas.
Ecuador is a country lacking in resources and facing a large debt. The government sees oil exploration as its best way out.
The story of this place, Yasuní National Park, offers a case study in how global financial forces continue to trap developing countries, forcing them to explore some of the most biodiverse places on the planet.
According to Ecuadorian diplomat Maria Fernanda Espinosa, former president of the UN General Assembly, countries like Ecuador are against the wall.
Exploring for oil in this part of the Amazon rainforest was not Ecuador’s first option. In 2007, then-president Rafael Correa proposed an innovative alternative that would have kept the oil reserves of a lot designated here as Block 43 underground, which at the time was estimated to contain around 1 billion barrels.
The plan called for countries to create a fund worth US$3.6 billion, half the estimated value of the oil, to compensate Ecuador for leaving its reserves untouched.
Supporters of the idea said it would be a win for climate, biodiversity and indigenous rights. Furthermore, according to them, it would have been a moral victory that would have created a precedent: a small, developing country would have been paid to give up a natural resource that helped make places like the United States and Europe as rich as they are.
But after the initial fanfare, only a minuscule portion of contributions actually arrived. Ecuador turned to China to ask for loans, around US$ 8 billion during Correa’s government, which would be paid in oil.
“Now that the global trend is to abandon fossil fuels, the time has come to take advantage of our oil to the last drop, so that it can benefit the poorest and at the same time respect the environment”, said last year the current president , Guillermo Lasso.
Other countries are also looking for new sources of oil, despite the International Energy Agency saying countries need to halt new projects to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Developing countries say they should be able to continue to use fossil fuels, as they have historically carried the least blame for climate change. But in many cases these countries are home to the most valuable ecosystems to help prevent global warming and the collapse of biodiversity.
Congo, for example, has put oil exploration areas up for auction that include rainforest, peatlands and parts of a rare mountain gorilla sanctuary.
In Ecuador, the oil industry insists that drilling can be done without causing too much damage. But, scientists say, even the best cases to date have led to deforestation and other pressures.
This increase in oil extraction could not come at a worse time for the world’s forests. With the Amazon rainforest weakened by deforestation and climate change, scientists warn it is approaching a threshold beyond which it can degrade and convert to savannah. Some areas are already emitting more carbon than they can store – a ticking time bomb of greenhouse gases.
“Ecuador’s greatest wealth is its biodiversity,” said Carlos Larrea, a professor at the Simón Bolívar Andean University in Quito, who helped design the fund that failed. For him, the destruction of Yasuní “is suicide”.
Nature always loses
Yasuní is full of life. She trills, quacks and peeps. The smallest monkeys in the world, pygmy marmosets, run along the branches of trees; capybaras, the largest rodents in the world, rest on the banks of rivers.
On a plot of just 25 hectares, scientists have documented the presence of about 1,000 species of native trees—roughly the same number as exist in the entire United States.
No terrestrial region on the planet is richer in biodiversity than this one, where the Amazon rises up to the foothills of the Andes. Genetic diversity is a vast, untapped natural resource that has the potential to offer cures for disease and open the door to technological innovation. But the fragmentation has already begun.
“Nature always loses out,” commented Renato Valencia, a forest ecologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador who has studied this area for decades. “When it comes to economic issues, that’s the rule.”
People are also at risk. An unknown number of men, women and children live in Yasuní in so-called voluntary isolation, rejecting contact with the outside world. They are known as the tagaeris and taromenanes.
Its reserve and the surrounding containment area are off limits for drilling, but the government has already discussed the possibility of reducing the protection zone in order to reach more oil.
“Oil is where nature put it,” said Fernando Santos, Ecuador’s energy minister, interviewed in November. “And that’s where we need to extract it, albeit very carefully.”
country dependent on oil
Oil began to be exported from Ecuador’s Amazon region half a century ago, when it was first discovered by American companies. In 1972, soldiers carried a symbolic first barrel in a parade through the streets of Quito. “The people cannot contain their emotions,” said the narrator of a newsreel filmed that day.
Over the next 50 years, Ecuadorian GDP per capita almost doubled, growing at a pace slightly faster than that of Latin America as a whole. Many attribute the feat to oil.
“There was a change, from an Ecuador that was very backward to an Ecuador that advanced, not until the first world, but halfway there”, said Santos.
But the economic benefits have practically not reached the communities that have lived in the vicinity of oil exploration for decades. More than half of the inhabitants of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the vast majority of the country’s oil comes from, are poor.
Ramiro Páez Rivera, an executive who has worked for several oil companies in the region, said it was up to the government to make good use of oil taxes.
“We paid millions of dollars,” he said. “And the people don’t even have drinking water.”
Thousands of indigenous Ecuadorians staged an 18-day strike last year that shut down much of the country’s oil production. “We don’t want oil,” said Leonidas Iza, president of Ecuador’s Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, which helped lead the protests.
But at the same time that the protesters called for an end to the president’s plans to double oil production, they also demanded a reduction in fuel prices, something that would normally generate greater demand for oil.
“The cruel reality is that in these 50 years our economy has become dependent on oil,” said Iza.
The world has let us down
The proposal put forward in 2007 to leave oil in the ground was an effort to chart a different path. It was defended by an unexpected figure: the Minister of Energy, Alberto Acosta.
“It was the minister of oil proposing that oil not be extracted,” Acosta recalled. In his youth he had accepted without question the idea that oil was crucial to lifting Ecuador out of poverty. But after decades of production, the biggest effects he saw were pollution and deforestation.
Thus, Ecuador asked the world for US$ 3.6 billion, half of what it expected to earn from the sale of oil. At first there were positive reactions. The UN agreed to manage the fund. Germany and Italy pledged to contribute.
But some governments did not trust President Correa, a populist ruler who had declared a moratorium on the national foreign debt. Many seemed baffled by the idea of paying a country to stop doing something. Correa was accused of blackmail because he intended to exploit the oil if the money did not arrive.
When the proposal for Yasuní lost steam, China assumed increasing influence in Ecuador, stepping in with billions of dollars in loans, some of which were to be paid off in oil.
In the end, the proposal for Yasuní only raised about $13 million. “The world has let us down,” Correa told the nation in August 2013.
Correa now lives in Belgium and, due to a conviction for corruption, could be arrested if he returns to Ecuador.
Seeking another type of economy
After the failure of the Yasuní project, a state-owned oil company that is now part of Petroecuador began knocking on the doors of indigenous communities in Block 43, offering cash and housing and sanitation projects.
Today there are 12 platforms scattered throughout the forest, connected by a gravel road.
On each platform, workers drill dozens of wells, facing different directions to prevent further deforestation. Hundreds of workers work in shifts, and work continues 24 hours a day.
“We are making an aggressive effort to reach the limits of what can be done there,” said Hugo Aguiar, Petroecuador’s general manager.
But it’s not clear how long the oil from Block 43 will be worth the investment. Heavy oil has a lower value and emits more carbon than lighter types. More than 90% of what is extracted is toxic water that needs to be removed and treated, which makes operations more expensive.
Pressure against oil exploration in Ecuador continues to mount. After years of local hurdles, a referendum on whether the government should keep Block 43 crude oil in the ground may finally go to a vote.
“We are going to exhaust all the oil blocks, exhaust all the ecosystems, but we will not solve the problem of Ecuador’s economy,” said Iza, the indigenous leader. “We need to think about another type of economy.”
Translated by Clara Allain
I have worked as a journalist for over 10 years, and my work has been featured on many different news websites. I am also an author, and my work has been published in several books. I specialize in opinion writing, and I often write about current events and controversial topics. I am a very well-rounded writer, and I have a lot of experience in different areas of journalism. I am a very hard worker, and I am always willing to put in the extra effort to get the job done.
