Quito, Ecuador – Ecuador’s Environment Ministry said in a statement sent to Reuters yesterday that a study of a plan to build a new oil pipeline fails to provide a complete analysis of the country’s biodiversity.
The Environment Ministry must grant an environmental license for a seven-company consortium to build a long-awaited heavy crude pipeline that is expected to nearly double the country’s oil output. Environment Minister Lourdes Luque told local television yesterday that 72 observations on the study were turned in to consortium OCP Ecuador SA last week. The ministry declined to provide access to the observations.
But in a press statement dated last week and sent to Reuters Monday, the ministry said the environmental study “suffers deficiencies in its analysis in several zones, and as a result should be improved.”
The Environment Ministry’s concerns follow several weeks of increased protests by ecological groups that complain the pipeline’s route through a protected forest 16 miles (25 km) northwest of Quito known as Mindo, will destroy a unique habitat for birds and other wildlife.
Still, Luque, who assumed her post less than three weeks ago, has said the timeline for the $1.1 billion pipeline construction should not be pushed back. According to the Energy Ministry, construction was slated to begin in June.
The statement likewise pushes for a stronger environmental analysis of a southern route for the pipeline, one OCP says won’t adequately protect the duct from geological hazards.
“The route is a substantial part of the project. This is why we maintain that this is the route. If tomorrow, there was a need to make certain, sustainable corrections, naturally we should do so,” Francisco Diaz, spokesman for OCP, told Reuters.
Diaz said the company tried to focus the study on the areas surrounding Mindo, and will respond to the ministry’s comments that the study lacks details on forests located to the south.
The consortium, which signed a contract to build the pipeline in February, is made up of Alberta Energy , Agip Petroleum, Kerr McGee , Occidental Petroleum , Repsol-YPF , Perez Companc and Argentine construction firm Techint.
Ecuador currently has only one pipeline, with a maximum capacity of 400,000 bpd, for state and private production. Oil is the South American country’s biggest export.
