Ecuador signs permits for oil drilling in Amazon's Yasuni national park
Friday 23 May 201406.48EDT
Companies could start extracting oil underneath key biodiversity reserve on Earth by 2016
The Yasuni national park is a Unesco biosphere reserve, containing pristine Amazon forests and home to two uncontacted tribes. Photograph: Cecilia Puebla/EPA
Adam Vaughan
Drilling for oil in a part of theAmazon rainforestconsidered one of the most biodiverse hotspots on the planet is to go ahead less than a year after Ecuador's president lifted a moratorium on oil drilling there.
Last August,Rafeal Correa scrapped a pioneering scheme, the YasuniIshpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) initiative, to keep oil in the ground under a corner of the Yasuni national parkin return for donations from the international community.
He said only $13m (£8m) of the $3.6bn goal had been given, and that "the world has failed us", giving the green light to drilling.
On Thursday, environment minister, Lorena Tapia, saidpermits for drilling had been signedfor the 6,500-square-mile reserve, known as block 43, and oil production might begin as soon as 2016.
The permits allow Petroamazonas, a subsidary of the state oil company, to begin construction of access roads and camps to prepare for drilling.
Esperanza Martinez, an environmental activist in Ecuador,was quoted in a leading national dailyas saying Petroamazonas had a bad record on oil spills and it could not be trusted to drill safely in the Yasuni-ITT.
Earlier this month,Ecuador's government rejected a petitioncalling for abandoning plans for drilling in the area, saying the organisers had failed to get enough signatures to trigger a national referendum.
The petition's backers, YASunidos, accused the government of fraud after only 359,762 signatures of around 850,000 submitted were deemed genuine – the threshold for forcing a referendum is 583,323.
The ITT block of the Yasunipark, where the drilling will go ahead, is home to two uncontacted tribes. It is a Unesco site, andone hectare of the area is home to a richer mix of trees, birds, amphibians, and reptiles than the US and Canada put together.
Oil drilling has been taking place in the wider Yasuni national park for decades,dating back to Shell in the 1940s. In 2012,access roads had already been built in blocksneighbouringIshpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini.
In February,the Guardian revealedthat documents showed the Ecuadorean government had been negotiating a $1bn deal with a Chinese bank to drill for oil in the area, at the same time as seeking donations for the Yasuni-ITT initiative. The Ecuadorean ambassador to the UK, Juan FalconiPuig, rejected the claim as "baseless" and claimed the document was "fraudulent."
Ecuador drills for oil on edge of pristine rainforest in YasuniMonday 4 April 201612.40EDT
First of 200 wells drilled close to controversial block of forest known to have two of the last tribes living in isolation
Tiputiniriver and rainforest in Yasuni national park in Ecuador’s Amazon forest. Oil companies are given permit to drill for 920m barrels of crude believed to be beneath the forest floor. Photograph: Pete Oxford/Corbis
John Vidal
Ecuador has started drilling for oil on the edge of acontroversial block of pristine rainforestinhabited by two of the last tribes in the world living in voluntary isolation.
The well platform known as Tiputini C, which is now operational a few kilometres from the Peruvian border in the Yasuni national park, is expected to be the first of nearly 200 wells needed to extract the 920m barrels of crude thought to lie below the IshpingoTambocochaTiputini (ITT) block.
The Tiputini field is just outside the ITT zone which the government has ordered oil companies to leave untouched. But indigenous people, rainforest campaigners and many Ecuadoreans said this week that they expect oil exploitation in Yasuni national park to lead to pollution, forest destruction and the decimation of the nomadicTagaeri and the Taromenanetribes who have chosen to have no contact with the outside world.
The government’sministry of strategic sectors saidthat the state oil company, PetroAmazonas, would be using directional and horizontal drilling which would meet high international standards.
The first oil is expected to flow by the end of 2016. “We are optimising costs and increasing production areas with better prospects,” said minister Rafael Poveda.
Ecuador’s decision to allow oil companies to drill the ITT block, which contains around 30% of the country’s remaining reserves, has been hotly disputed since 2007 when the new Rafael Correa government pledged to permanently keep the oil underground in exchange for around $3.6bn from the international community.The “Yasuni initiative”was administered by the UN and hailed as one of the world’s most innovative conservation proposals.
But in August 2013,President Correa withdrew the proposal saying the pledges received from countries were minimaland that Ecuador had been failed by the international community.
He argued that Ecuador, which has beendevastated by oil pollution in the 1970sby US oil firms, had no option but to exploit the ITT oil to pay for poverty relief.
Correa’s change of mind led to demonstrations, the emergence of a political movement known as Yasunidos anda hotly-debated petition which failed to reach the threshold to trigger a national referendum.
Ecuador is the first country in the world to include therights of naturein its constitution and until the Yasuni controversy it was considered one of the most environmentally-progressive countries. To reduce criticism, Correa promised that only 1/1000th of the area of the Yasunipark would be exploited and the best available technology would be used to reduce pollution.
But many indigenous leaders and conservationists remain angry. “By drilling Yasuní-ITT, the Ecuadorian government is threatening to destroy one of the most biodiverse and culturally fragile treasures on the planet for what amounts to about a week of global oil supply,” said Amazon Watch’s director, Leila Salazar-Lopez.
“Why such urgency to exploit the Yasuni-ITT with an adverse oil market?” she said.
Alicia Cahuiya, the vice-president of the Waorani people in Ecuador who has received death threats for opposing oil exploitation in Yasuni, saidEcuadorwas not protecting isolated peoples.
“If they are going to protect them, they can no longer construct more roads or oil wells … The state must, as they say, ensure and protect the [isolated indigenous] Taromenane. As Waorani we ask that they keep their territory. No more exploitation there. No more taking down our trees,” she said.
Because of its location right on the equator at the junction of the forest and the mountains, Yasuní is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. The parkis thoughtto have more species of plants, animals and insects per hectare than anywhere else.
Kelly Swing, director of theTiputini biodiversity research centreon the edge of the Yasunipark, said drilling made no sense. “As a new wave of oil operations push into the last remaining corners of the Yasuni, we are appalled. Ecuador is now losing around $15 per barrel but continues to expand [oil] operations under the pretext that prices are about to soar again while countries like Iran are flooding the world market with more product every day.”
In a separate development, Ecuador’s government earlier this year sold oil exploration rights on 500,000 acres of forest adjoining the Yasunipark to a consortium of Chinese state-owned oil companies.
Andes Petroleum Ecuadorpaid about $80m, according to the research firm Energy Intelligence.
Questions:
- Summarize both articles.
- How would an ecocentrist respond to this article?
- How would a technocentrist respond to this article?
- Try to understand the government’s perspective. What are the benefits to drilling for oil in the Yasuni National Park?
- From the perspective of biodiversity. What are the drawbacks to drilling for oil in the Yasuni National Park?
- Explain the statement: “The environment and the economy are often in conflict.”
- What is one potential solution to solving the conflict between the economy and the environment?