In brazen disregard for both Ecuadorian and international law, Canadian company Ivanhoe Energy has started secret oil exploration activities on legally-titled land of the Kichwa indigenous people of Rucullacta without the community’s permission.
On May 28th, Rucullacta leaders gathered at a community workshop noticed a suspicious truck full of strangers decked out in orange uniforms pass by. The leaders quickly followed, pursuing the vehicle roughly a mile down a dirt road towards the wild interior of their territory, where evidence of the company’s illegal incursion into their land comes to light.
On either side of the road, trees are marked with multicolored flags, plants are tagged, and trails have been cut into the forest, disappearing in the distance into a vast sea of green. These trails will eventually be used to conduct seismic testing – a highly intrusive preliminary phase of oil extraction that involves detonating explosives at varying depths in order to produce readings that would indicate the potential depth, quantity, and quality of crude reserves underneath the ground.
Rucullacta leaders confronted the workers – who identified themselves as employees of Ivanhoe – and asked them to leave. Caught off guard, they complied without incident. Rucullacta leaders speculated that Ivanhoe sought to take advantage of what it thought would be a deserted community because May 28th had been declared a national Ecuadorian holiday.
There have been previous reports of company workers harassing and monitoring community members, and rumors that Ivanhoe had been actively scouting Rucullacta territory for places to begin searching for new pockets of crude given its two previous wells outside Rucullacta territory have produced disappointing results.
But given the state of the trails and markings, Ivanhoe workers have clearly been working here for several weeks despite the adamant opposition of the community, and in violation on the Ecuadorian right to free, prior, informed, consultation, and international standards that guarantee the right to community consent.
Rucullacta has repeatedly declared its opposition to oil activities, and has brought its fight to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to keep Ivanhoe from drilling for heavy crude oil on their legally titled ancestral land.
In 2008 the Ecuadorian government granted Ivanhoe a 30-year contract to drill in Block 20, a region of picturesque, forested Andean foothills that includes the tourist hub city of Tena and the lands of some 8,000 Kichwa, with Rucullacta being the largest of the communities. The contract was granted without consulting local inhabitants, though Ivanhoe was then required by law and Ecuador’s constitution to seek community consent for its activities. As we have written about elsewhere, Ivanhoe’s track record of adhering to a supposed “consultation” process has been a complete travesty.
Such an egregious disregard for the law during early stages of a drilling project should serve as forewarning, and does not bode well for the company’s willingness to play by the rules if its project indeed advances. Given the records of some of Ivanhoe’s top executives (think, for example, of founder Robert Friedland, aka “Toxic Bob”), this project promises to be a complete disaster in the making.
While Ecuador dawdles, the Rucullacta community has drawn a sharp line in the sand (or forest); with successful efforts already to kick out company workers, the community may just stop this disaster before it starts.
