This is where it all began, one day in February 1967. The "Lago Agrio Well No. 1" was the first perforated oil well in Ecuador, by the American consortium Texaco-Gulf, opening the era of black gold in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
"That day, ministers and officials bathed in oil. Then they dumped everything in the river behind...it started well...", quips Donald Moncayo, general coordinator of the Union of Victims of Texaco ( UDAPT).
Fifty-six years later, oil - the country's number one export - continues to flow. Lago Agrio (north-east) has become the oil capital of the country, the forest is ineluctably shrinking and pollution continues its misdeeds, accuse local activists.
From shaft n°1, there remains today the steel pump with a horse's head, frozen in the middle of a green lawn, surmounted by a beautiful souvenir sign. It was closed in 2006, after generating nearly 10 million barrels.
But throughout the region, delivered to the economic colonization carried out by the State since the 1960s, on millions of hectares there are only wells, pipelines, tankers, tankers, treatment stations and flaming flares... in a strange layering of petrol black and lush vegetable green.
Oil in Ecuador is nearly 500,000 barrels per day, 13 billion dollars in revenue per year on average. A blessing for the state coffers and the "development" of the country, according to the authorities. A curse synonymous with debt, poverty and pollution on a large scale, judge without concession Donald Moncayo.
The 49-year-old man, "born 200 meters from an oil well", has been leading since the 90s, with a handful of other activists, a difficult and endless crusade against Texaco.
The story is well known: in 1993, some 30,000 inhabitants of the region filed a complaint against the American giant (owned by Chevron since 2001) before a New York court.
In 30 years of activity, the company has dug 356 wells, and for each of them retention basins (880 in total) collecting remains of oil, toxic waste and contaminated water (of which 60 million liters have been discharged in total, according to the UDAPT).
These "pools", scattered throughout the forest, have led to a major ecological disaster, often cited as one of the worst oil disasters in history.
After many procedures and twists and turns, Texaco, now Chevron, was sentenced in 2011 by the Ecuadorian justice to pay 9.5 billion dollars to repair the damage.
The American giant however obtained in 2018, before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the annulment of the judgment.
"Texaco ransacked this part of the Amazon. Since then, they've done everything to evade justice, and they haven't paid a penny to repair the damage. Let them pay!" loses Mr. Moncayo.
Chevron assured him that Texaco had paid $40 million to clean up the area.
Abandoned in 1994, the "Agua-Rico 4" well is now hidden in the forest, at the end of a small path.
A stick is enough to burst the layer of humus on the old pool, and release a thick black liquid. A stream below is also contaminated.
"And it's like that everywhere," breathes Donald Moncayo, whose white surgical gloves are smeared with crude sponged on the floor.
Here, a wooden hovel has been built close to an old swimming pool.
There, cows graze the grass, while crude emerges from underground. "The cattle eat all this like chewing gum...", grumbles the activist.
At the time, it was the local Catholic Church that sounded the alarm, faced with the unexplained increase in health problems, miscarriages and cancers.
Leaving Ecuador in the 1990s, Texaco handed over its drilling to the public company Petroecuador, which continued operations. The swimming pools left by the American company have, for the most part, not been decontaminated, according to the UDAPT.
Chevron maintains that Texaco was then "only a minority partner" in a consortium with Petroecuador. And that the latter, despite an agreement in 1995 with Texaco, "did not clean up the environment to which it was bound and continued to operate and develop its activities (...)".
"The problems continued with Petroecuador", sighs Mr. Moncayo.
Since 1995, the company has been reinjecting contaminated water into the soil, a process considered to be cleaner. "But in my opinion, only where we monitor. Elsewhere, they throw this toxic water into the rivers," he says.
Pollution also comes from crude leaks from pipelines and pipes (between 10 and 15 per month according to a study by the University of Quito with UDAPT) or from the 447 flares that burn night and day.
"It heats up, it makes noise. I have to close the windows when I cook," says an old peasant woman, whose wooden house adjoins a borehole.
“One day they installed this well, we had nothing to say. We did not receive any compensation. flaming gases.
Following complaints from environmentalists, an Ecuadorian court ordered the closure of all 447 chimneys by March. The sentence is enforceable, but remains for the moment apparently ignored.
Local conflicts also oppose local peasant and indigenous communities to the national company. They are most of the time resolved by one-off indemnification or compensation agreements (infrastructure works, services, etc.).
At Rio Doche 2, near the town of Shushufindi, where 133 families live, a metal fence and holes in the road prevent trucks from picking up crude from a borehole.
A trickle of unsavory water trickles down towards a wooden building below. "My chickens and my ducks started dying. The water in the well got dark; I couldn't drink it and even do laundry. The girls had skin problems," says Francesca Woodman, owner of the small "finca", forced to leave the premises with her eight children.
"We here suffer the pollution, the leaks, the smoke from the chimneys, we swallow the dust from the trucks, while they collect the dollars in Quito!" plague Patricia Quinaloa, one of the leaders of the protesters.
Rio Doche 2 also testifies to the schizophrenia of the local populations, stuck between poverty and job search on the one hand and pollution on the other. "As long as we have a little work and money, even if they are only crumbs, for the moment it holds, people accept...", observes Wilmer Pacheco, driver in a local NGO.
According to official statistics, poverty in the three Amazonian and oil provinces of Sucumbios, Napo and Orellana exceeds 44%, while it is 25% nationally.
The day after he came to power in 2021, President Guillermo Lasso promised to double oil production, up to one million barrels per day.
Asked, Petroecuador did not respond to the various requests from AFP.
02/22/2023 18:57:04 - Lago Agrio (Equateur) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
