Friday, 19 Jan 2001

QUITO, Ecuador

What a long and intense day! Our committee held a meeting with the minister of mines and energy and the president of the state oil company, Petroecuador. To our surprise, the meeting was attended by representatives from OCP Ltd., at the request of the government. After a short introduction, we highlighted several concerns we have about the OCP Ltd. northern route proposal. These include the lack of information available, the deficient quality of the information that is available, the criteria for defining critical and/or sensitive areas, the potential for spills to damage ecosystems, and legal gaps.

We also proposed that the route should not be determined in the contract signed with the company. Rather, it should be a result of the analysis and risk assessments made after the contract is signed. To our surprise, both the minister and Petroecuador’s president answered that the route will be not be determined by the contract. This opens the way for a real discussion regarding the route. Tomorrow, a group of representatives from our group, OCP Ltd., and the ministry of mines will visit the alternate, or southern, route. We were interested in having someone from the Ecuadorian oil company attend, but this has not yet been confirmed.

The meeting had a positive spirit and the minister said he intended “to do things the best way possible.” Our next phase will be to keep an eye on the environmental impact assessment preparation and evaluation process. The terms of reference of the environmental impact agreement have been described to us verbally, but we have not seen the actual text. It seems that irreversible damage, such as the disappearance of a species, is unlikely. But to the ministry and ENTRIX, all impacts can be compensated. This is troublesome!

We await the contract signing with optimism, but we also have to be alert. The attorney general needs to release his report by 29 Jan. The minister now faces an impeachment trial in Congress, where he can be censured. According to the new constitution, a presidential appointee, such as a minister, cannot be removed from the post by Congress. However, things could get ugly politically.

In the meantime, we need to strengthen our position. Tomorrow, I will make a presentation to the committee in the defense of the environment (CEDENMA), the group that brings together the environmental NGOs in the country. At that meeting, we hope to drum up more active involvement in this process. We need all the help we can get! We now enter a phase of intellectual debate regarding the environmental impact assessment of the routes. If we play our cards right, this could be the way to prevent the pipeline from going through the amazing and beautiful northwest Pichincha area in Ecuador.