Petrobras Decides Not to Build Yasuní Roadway

4/25/2006

Brazilian state-run company confirms a change of plans for oil exploration in national park in Ecuador.

In an official communication published on its website, and sent to the non-governmental organization Save America's Forests, the Brazilian state-owned Petrobras announced that it has made significant changes in its oil exploration project in Block 31, in the central region of the Yasuní national park in Ecuador. The base for drilling and processing petroleum (Production Facilities Center - CPF), which before was to be built inside the block, has been moved to outside the park. Moreover, the access road that would cut the region in half will no longer be built and the access to wells will be only via helicopter.

According to the communiqué, "the modifications in the project have been under analysis in conjunction with the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Energy since October of last year. This will reduce use of the area of the Yasuní National Park to a minimum". The company further mentions that drilling of these wells represents an additional 30,000 barrels a day to national oil production, and over 1,500 direct jobs will be created with the base's construction. Everything done with the greatest possible innovations in terms of socioenvironmental care. Read the full text of the document here.

Nevertheless, the problems with the project are not new. In 2004, under the government of Gutiérrez, Petrobras had obtained an environmental license of oil exploration in Block 31, which included building of an access road and an exploratory base. Civil society mobilized against the project and local indigenous organizations promoted a series of protests against the presence of the oil company in the region, categorized as being for national preservation, part of the ancestral homeland of the Huaorani ethnic group and, according to UNESCO, one of the richest biodiversity reserves on Earth.

In July 2005, the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment prohibited the company from entering the Park, suspending its license until technical analyses of the project had been concluded. Since then, even the ministry itself acknowledged the existence of several irregularities in the granting of the license, and referred a number of charges of corruption related to the process. Furthermore, the Brazilian Government itself began to pressure Ecuador, defending the company's interests.

Civil society commemorates the changes

Over the last few years, civil society organizations, both local and international, have mobilized in defense of Yasuní. In addition to protests of local indigenous communities, a series of activities were promoted against the initial Petrobras project for Block 31 - web-based activities, sending of letters to authorities, legal actions and appeals in Ecuadorian courts, statements of support from former ministers of the environment, environmentalists, politicians and scholars, etc.

Important initiatives, as the one that the website www.amazonia.org.br coordinated in 2004. The site has promoted a cyber action, which pressured the Petrobras´s direction in Brazil to review and reconsider its plans for National Yasuní Park, avoiding any activity that could affect its original characteristics. It has worked as an alert for the head-office of the oil company, which began to participate more on the decisions and environmental issues related to its branch in Ecuador.

These organizations received well the latest changes in the project. "This is a huge step in the right direction. The two most potentially damaging components of the project - the road and the processing facility - have been taken out of the park and Huaorani territory. Given the proliferation of oil concessions throughout the Amazon, hopefully this will set a critical precedent. No new oil acess roads through primary rainforest", said Matt Finer, from Save America's Forests in a statement to the Environmental News Service.

"This is a milestone, not only because the road will not be built, but because for the first time, Petrobras has retreated in its colonialist attitude in Latin America", commented Roberto Smeraldi, director of Friends of the Earth - Brazilian Amazonia. "Despite the institutional fragility of Ecuador, open attempts at corruption that characterize this case and political pressures that even mobilized the President of Brazil, Petrobras will have to abide by the law, something foreign to its corporate culture. Let's see if this begins to happen in Brazil as well", he added.

see Amazonia.org.br article with pictures
http://www.amazonia.org.br/english/noticias/noticia.cfm?id=206644