Ignoring the devastating toll 30 years of reckless oil development has taken on Ecuador — particularly on the Amazon and its people — a consortium of multinational oil companies are poised to make the same irreversible mistake by moving ahead with a controversial new oil pipeline project known as the OCP, Oleoducto de Crudo Pesado.
Among the consortium's main fund providers is Citigroup — the world's most destructive bank. As the number one funder of oil pipelines around the world it is no surprise to find Citi playing a central role in yet another massive, destructive fossil fuel project.
Financially backed by Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase Bank, and Deutsche Bank, the OCP consortium is composed of Alberta Energy (Canada), Kerr McGee (USA), Occidental Petroleum (USA), AGIP (Italy), Perez Companc (Argentina), Repsol-YPF (Spain) and Techint (Argentina). Occidental is notorious for its invasion of the U'wa people's land in Colombia.
The pipeline would transport heavy crude from the country's eastern rainforest region to the Pacific Coast, placing fragile ecosystems and dozens of communities along the nearly 500 kilometre route in jeopardy.
The pipeline route chosen by the OCP consortium affects 11 protected areas, and cuts through the middle of the Mindo Nambillo Cloudforest Reserve and the surrounding ecologically sensitive forests. This area is home to more than 450 species of birds — 46 of which are threatened by extinction — and has been designated the first "Important Bird Area" of South America by Birdlife International.
The pipeline also represents a threat to the area's burgeoning ecotourism industry, which is expected to bring in $600 million over the next 20 years.
In order to fill the new pipeline, Ecuador would have to double its current oil production, setting off an unprecedented boom in new oil exploration that could lead to the irreversible loss and destruction of some of the country's last remaining old growth rainforests and territories of isolated indigenous peoples.
Hundreds of new oil wells and flow lines would be built from existing oil concessions, along with facilities necessary to process and refine the heavy crude for transport across the country. These activities threaten protected areas such as Yasuni National Park, Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, and in the Limoncocha and Panacocha Biological Reserves.
This project would also fuel the search for additional oil reserves covering 2.4 million hectares of frontier forest, the majority of which falls on the ancestral territories of Achuar, Shuar, Huaorani, Quichua, Shiwiar, and Zapara indigenous communities. Many of these communities have vowed to never permit oil development on their land.
Prominent Ecuadorian and international environmental and human rights organisations are calling for the cancellation of the OCP project and a moratorium on all new oil exploration in the country's Amazon region.
CONAIE, the powerful national indigenous organisation whose non-violent uprisings have led to the ousting of two presidents in the last five years, is joining environmental groups and local communities in filing for a legal injunction in the coming weeks to void the OCP contract with the government.
The Ecuadorian government, the OCP consortium, and the financiers have failed to fully assess or disclose the long-term impacts of the new OCP pipeline on ecologically and culturally sensitive areas in the Amazon region or the coast.
The government is attempting to silence all public debate on these concerns by closing the public review process a mere three weeks after the release of the 1500-page environmental impact assessment and pushing ahead with the licensing of the project by early June. Construction is set to begin in six weeks.
Ecuador's oil exports are primarily destined for consumption in the United States, particularly in California. Not only does this pipeline threaten fragile areas and local communities, it further increases our reliance on oil — the main fossil fuel responsible for climate change.
We must call on the involved financial institutions to stop bankrolling destruction of the Amazon and environmental injustice and urge them to invest in renewable energy alternatives — not Amazon crude!
Please call, email or write today! For a complete list of contact information, please visit <http://www.amazonwatch.org>.
[From Rainforest Action Network May newsletter. Contact at <http://www.ran.org>.]