Ecuador begins shutting down oil wells in the Amazon

Ecuador has shut down a well and begun dismantling infrastructure at a drilling site in a protected area of ​​the Amazon, a year after Ecuadorians voted in a referendum to end oil drilling in a national park.

The Ecuadorian government has shut down the Ishpingo B-56 ​​well, one of nearly 250 oil wells in Block 43-ITT in Yasuni National Park, the country’s Ministry of Energy and Mines said this week.

Last August, Ecuadorians voted against drilling for oil in the Amazon protected area, which is home to two uncontacted tribes and is a biodiversity hotspot. About 60 percent of voters in a referendum voted against continuing oil drilling in Yasuni National Park, home to Tagaeri and Taromenani who live in self-isolation. The park was designated a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve in 1989.

Following the referendum, the state oil company Petroecuador is now forced to dismantle its operations.

However, the start of the first such dismantling came a year after the popular vote expressed a clear desire to end oil drilling in the ecologically sensitive area.

The government has asked for a five-year extension to wind down all operations in Yasuni National Park and has been criticized for failing to implement a constitutional court order to close more than 200 wells within a year of the August 2023 referendum.

Commenting on the beginning of the closure of the wells, the Ecuadorian Minister of Energy and Mines, Antonio Goncalves, said in a statement published by the Associated Press: “I came to verify that the decision of the referendum last year, in which the citizens voted in favor of the closure. from this field, it is being complied with.”

“Complying with the closure of ITT is not an easy job, it requires special and technical planning,” added the minister.

Amazon Watch’s director of climate and energy, Kevin Koenig, responded at the start of the well closures that, “The government is bound by its obligations to the constitutional court, which gave it a year to shut down 227 wells. … Just because they closed one yesterday doesn’t mean they’re abiding by the court order.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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