RUPTURED PIPELINE IN ECUADOR SPRAYS AMAZON RAINFOREST WITH CRUDE OIL

An oil spill in eastern Ecuador has reached a protected area of the nation’s Amazon rainforest and contaminated a river that supplies water to Indigenous communities, Ecuador’s environment ministry said.

Nearly two hectares (five acres) of a protected area of the Cayambe-Coca National Park have been contaminated, as well as the Coca River – one of the biggest in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The park of some 400,000 hectares (988,420 acres) is home to a wide variety of animals, including red brocket deer and various amphibians, and holds important water reserves.

Heavy rains caused a mudslide in the eastern Napo province on Friday, during which a rock struck and ruptured a pipeline owned by private company OCP Ecuador.

Neither the government nor OCP Ecuador has quantified the extent of the spill, but the environmental authority has described it as a “major” pollution event.
“Our staff are monitoring 210 kilometres (130 miles) of the Coca River and its tributaries and coordinating containment and remediation where traces of hydrocarbon are identified,” the ministry said.

Operator OCP Ecuador said on Saturday that it had stopped pumping crude, and the next day it said it had contracted three specialist companies to carry out cleaning and remediation work.

“Once again we have been polluted and we are fighting about it with OCP,” Patricia Vargas, who heads the Panduyaku Indigenous community in Ecuador’s Sucumbios province, told the Reuters news agency.

“The oil is already coating the banks of the Coca River and we call for immediate action,” she said.

The development comes amid rising concerns that crude oil, illegal logging and other human activities are wreaking havoc on the region’s rainforests, which in turn have harmed the environment.

Activists have been calling on governments to do more to protect endangered wildlife as well as Indigenous communities who rely on the land and water resources for their survival.

The pipeline spill also follows a gigantic oil leak in Peru earlier this month that saw approximately 11,900 barrels of oil seep into the ocean. Officials said the “catastrophe” – linked to a volcanic eruption on Tonga – would take weeks to clean up.