Ecuador’s citizens voted to stop oil drilling in heart of Amazon. A year later, it hasn’t happened

It’s been a year since the people of Ecuador voted to halt oil drilling in a national park in the heart of the country’s share of the Amazon, and nothing has been done to start shutting down operations. For supporters of the shutdown, that’s not even the worst part: the government is now seeking a five-year extension for the state-run oil company to get out.

The Waorani people, an Indigenous group whose territory overlaps Yasuni National Park, and others are frustrated by the lack of compliance with the referendum.

“We should already have advanced results, with the closures almost 100 per cent complete, but the government has not committed to that,” said Juan Bay, president of the main Waorani organization in Ecuador, known as NAWE. “There has been no political will to guarantee the rights of the Ecuadorian people that the ballot boxes decided.”

Yasuni National Park is one of most biodiverse regions on the planet. Besides the Waorani, it’s home to two of the world’s last Indigenous communities living in voluntary isolation, the Taromenane and the Tagaeri people, according to nonprofit Amazon Frontlines.

Supporters were jubilant last year when almost 60 per cent of voters supported the referendum on ending drilling in a block known as 43-ITT. They called it a historic referendum that would keep some 700 million barrels of crude in the ground to safeguard nature and Indigenous communities there.

A constitutional court gave the government and state-run Petroecuador a year to shut down wells and roads and dismantle drilling infrastructure. But earlier this month, Ecuador’s government asked the court for an extension of the August 2024 deadline to close the oil block by at least five years and five months.

Ecuador’s Ministry for Energy and Mines did not respond to requests for comment. Antonio Goncalves, appointed to lead the ministry in July, told local media that they are working with Petroecuador on an “exit plan” and “the dismantling” of its facilities.

“This has never been done before, neither in the country nor in the world. It has to be done in a responsible way. We have a tight schedule, but we believe we can do it,” Goncalves said in a televised interview with Teleamazonas on Aug. 21.

Some experts say that a year was not enough time to dismantle operations and that President Daniel Noboa needed the large revenue from the oil industry to combat spiraling violence in the country for which a state of emergency was declared in January. Oil accounts for nearly one-third of the Ecuador’s GDP and its economy is struggling to meet its domestic debt obligations.

“It was going to be very hard to do considering everything that has been going on within the country,” Beatriz Nice, an Ecuador-based associate at Wilson Center, a Washington think tank, said in an interview.

But Nice said the five-year extension request shows the government is not in a rush.

“Obviously the administration is buying time,” she said. “It tells people, and especially the Indigenous communities, that your situation is not a priority for us.”

The oil industry has been operating in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon for over five decades, according to nonprofit Amazon Watch, which said major oil spills have been frequent and at one stage Petroecuador averaged a spill a week. Petroecuador didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

Kevin Koenig, climate and energy director for Amazon Watch, said the spills translate into elevated levels of cancer, respiratory ailments, miscarriages and other health problems for people living nearby. He said it was telling that the government didn’t include any funds to dismantle oil drilling in its budget this year.

“They already knew they were not going to comply with this,” he said. “They are using a bunch of technical arguments, but it seems like they are just trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes and it’s very clear that they want to continue to extract oil and get all the oil they can out of those fields before they close them.”

The Union of People Affected by the Petroleum Operations of Texaco, which tracks oil spills, said the Ecuadorian Amazon saw an average of 10 spills a month from 2016 to 2021, said Donald Moncayo, a coordinator with the group.

Bay, the Waorani leader, will lead a delegation to the Ecuadorian capital to speak to Congress on Friday. He said his people want to be included in the process.

“The decision of the Ecuadorian people was a relief for the Waorani people, because they see that for six decades, oil has not been a development, it has not been a change, but has brought death,” he said.

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