Oil and Ecuador
Oil has changed the face of Ecuador in the brief space of 30 years. Since the early 1970s the country has been transformed from an agricultural economy into one in which mining plays an important role. Today, Ecuador’s economy is driven by the price of oil on the world market.
The eastern side of Ecuador, the Oriente, a part of the Amazon basin, is almost totally covered with tropical rainforest, containing a huge variety of flora and fauna. The Ecuadorian Amazon region covers 50,000 square miles of tropical rainforest, a little less than half the total surface area of the country. Forest clearing, woodcutting and oil extraction represent the three greatest threats to the Amazonian rainforest.
Of these three, the oil extraction is the biggest threat, in particular, because of the irresponsible way the extraction is carried out. Large areas of Ecuador’s Oriente have been devastated by the oil industry with a combination of deforestation and contamination causing immense damage.
The gas which escapes during oil extraction is burned off. This process releases all kinds of poisonous substances. Waste oil is collected in piscinas (literally: swimming pools). These are often no more than shallow pits from which a large amount of oil leaks away and from which toxic vapours rise continuously. When a piscina is full, it is ‘cleaned’ by digging out some of the oil. The remainder – by far the greater part – is covered with a layer of earth. This ‘cleaning’ is extremely dirty and unhealthy work. The poisonous oil vapours get into the body through the nose, mouth and skin pores.
Pipelines bring the oil from the oil fields to Ecuador’s economic centres and to the transfer depots on the coast. The beginning of the Trans-Ecuador Pipeline cuts the village of Shushufindi right down the middle. Pipelines break regularly causing environmental disasters. The Trans-Ecuador Pipeline has broken 30 times in its existence, releasing a total of almost 400,000 barrels of oil into the Amazon basin.
The consequences of deforestation in the Ecuadorean Amazon are catastrophic. During the past 30 years almost 230,000 acres a year have been lost to deforestation, equal to one per cent of the total surface area of jungle.
Want to learn more?Amazon Crude
Chevron Toxico
Slick
