Ecuador takes over two Amazon oil blocks

QUITO: Ecuador has taken over operation of two oil blocks in the Amazon rainforest that since 1999 had been operated by Spain’s Repsol under a contract now expired, state company Petroecuador said Sunday.

Petroecuador said in a statement it “assumes operation” of blocks 16 and 67 after Repsol’s contracts for exploration and exploitation ended on December 31.

The blocks are in the Amazonian province of Orellana in Ecuador’s east and produce 13,533 barrels of oil per day.

They are located in the Yasuni National Park, home to a nature reserve and Indigenous communities.

Crude oil is a major revenue source in Ecuador, whose total production was 479,000 barrels per day from January to November 2022, 78 percent of it by Petroecuador.

The country exported 312,400 barrels per day during that period, generating nearly $8.4 billion, according to the Central Bank.

In 2020 the Ecuadoran government thwarted a deal for Repsol to sell its rights to the two blocks to the Canadian firm New Stratus Energy, meaning the blocks would revert to the state once the contracts ended.

An oil spill in eastern Ecuador in February last year, had reached a nature reserve and polluted a river that supplies water to indigenous communities.

Nearly two hectares (five acres) of a protected area of the Cayambe-Coca national park had been contaminated, as well as the Coca River — one of the biggest in the Ecuadoran Amazon.

In May 2020 in the same area, a mudslide damaged pipelines, resulting in 15,000 barrels of oil polluting three Amazon basin rivers, affecting several riverside communities.