OCP Oil Pipeline in Ecuador 

If the OCP Oil pipeline goes thru it will DOUBLE the number of oil wells in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This will impact the Yasuni and Cuyabeno National Parks as well as many indigenous communities. 

The big chance however is to convince the German bank, the WestLB, to cancel its $900 million financing of the project.

A second and updated protest letter will be sent to the Head of the financing German bank, the WestLB, to the Primeminster of the German Federal State Nordrhein Westfalen, NRW (the main shareholder of WestLB), and the two responsible ministers for finances and economy in NRW. Click here to read the first letter to WestLB & LandesBank in July 2001.

The letter should be signed by a wide alliance of international and German NGOs. For that reason we ask you all kindly joining the alliance by agreeing
to sign the following letter till Wednessday 19th of September, 2001.

We need as many organisations as possible to sign on to the letter below
drafted by Rettet den Regenwald. If your organisation(s) can sign on, please
tell Rettet den Regenwald at Info@regenwald.ORG for the Earth.
 

SECOND JOINT LETTER FROM INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS 
REGARDING THE OCP HEAVY CRUDE PIPELINE IN ECUADOR

Dear Sirs:

We, the undersigned international environmental and human rights organizations, are writing to urge you to take immediate steps in preventing
a tragedy in the making-one that you have the power to avert. The government
of Ecuador and a consortium of multinational oil companies are moving ahead with a controversial new oil pipeline project known as the OCP (Oleoducto de
Crudos Pesados). Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB), the largest publicly owned bank in Germany, has confirmed it is providing financing to the OCP Ltd. Consortium through a $900 million, 17-year loan agreement reached on June 10, 2001. We urge you to suspend the disbursement of this loan at once.

Your immediate action on this issue is necessary given that the Ecuadorian government and the Consortium are proceeding with construction of this pipeline and disregarding legitimate public concern about the environmental, social and health impacts of the project. This project is moving ahead in violation of the Ecuadorian Constitution, which requires proper prior consultation with affected communities.

The OCP Ltd. Consortium and the Ecuadorian government have failed to evaluate or disclose the long-term adverse impacts of sprawling oil exploration on pristine areas, public health, and water resources of the Amazon region, the Andean Highlands and the Pacific plains in Esmeraldas.

To date, there has been little assessment of the reality that the heavy crude deposits needed to fill the pipeline over its 20-year life lie beneath internationally recognized eco-tourism destinations, national parks, wildlife reserves, and indigenous territories. Failure on the part of the project sponsor to resolve such outstanding issues will only lead to escalating public protests and legal challenges.

Ecuador is experiencing the highest rate of deforestation in the Amazon Basin. 

Are you willing to ensure that the same environmental and social devastation that the past 30 years of oil development has inflicted on the Ecuadorian Amazon will not be repeated over the next 20 years?

Ignoring the devastating toll thirty years of reckless oil development has taken on the country of Ecuador - particularly on the Amazon and its people - the government and a consortium of multinational oil companies are poised to make the same irreversible mistake by moving ahead with the OCP.

Financially backed by WestLB, the pipeline would transport heavy crude from
the country's eastern rainforest region to the Pacific Coast, placing fragile ecosystems and dozens of communities along the 300-mile route in jeopardy. 

The pipeline route chosen by the OCP consortium affects 11 protected areas, and cuts through very sensitive montane forests and remnants of the Chocó Pacific lowland forest that once covered the northern lowlands of coastal Ecuador and Colombia. Furthermore the route threatens the unique Mindo Nambillo Reserve. It is now recognised by the World Bank as one of the region's most critically threatened ecosystems. Installed by BirdLife International already in 1997 as the first South-American "Important Bird Area", this area is home to more than 450 species of birds - 6 of which are threatened by extinction. In general this area is housing rare, vulnerable, endangered and similarly threatened wildlife, as indicated in the IUCN Red Lists, meeting the criteria of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

The pipeline also represents a threat to the area's burgeoning eco-tourism industry, which is expected to bring in $600 million over the next 20 years. Prominent Ecuadorian and international environmentalists, the eco-tourism industry, and local communities have repeatedly voiced their strong opposition to the pipeline. Several international scientists at diverse university institutes as well as museums and botanical gardens share the same concerns and have voiced their objectives to OCP consortium as well as to the government in Ecuador and to WestLB.

In order to fill the new pipeline, Ecuador would have to double its current oil production, setting off an unprecedented boom in new oil exploration that could lead to the irreversible loss and destruction of some the country's last remaining old growth rainforest and territories of isolated indigenous peoples. Hundreds of new oil wells and flow lines would be built from existing oil concessions along with facilities necessary to process and refine the heavy crude for transport across the country.

These activities threaten protected areas such as Yasuni National Park, Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, and the Limoncocha and Panacocha Biological Reserves. This project would also fuel the search for additional oil reserves covering 2.4 million hectares of frontier forest, the majority of which falls on the ancestral territories of Achuar, Shuar, Huaorani, Quichua, Shiwiar, and Zapara indigenous communities. Many of these communities have vowed to never permit oil development on their land.

A dramatic increase in oil production of this magnitude also threatens communities who live along side the country's principle oil refineries in the coastal province of Esmeraldas. These communities, the majority of which are Afro-Ecuadorian, have some of the highest rates of cancers, respiratory, skin, and stomach ailments in all of Ecuador as a result of constant air, water, and soil contamination from the adjacent OIL refineries.

CONAIE, the powerful national indigenous organization whose non-violent uprisings have led to the ousting of two presidents in the last five years, is joining environmental groups and local communities in calling for the cancellation of the OCP project and a moratorium on all new oil exploration in the country's Amazon region. 

The Ecuadorian government, the OCP consortium, and the financiers have failed to fully assess or disclose the long-term impacts of the new OCP pipeline on ecologically and culturally sensitive areas in the Amazon region, the Andees and the Pacific coast. The government was attempting to silence all public debate on these concerns by closing the public review process a mere three weeks after the release of the 1,500-page Environmental Impact Assessment and pushed ahead with the licensing of the project by early June. Ecuador's oil exports are primarily destined for consumption in the United States, particularly in California. Not only does this pipeline threaten fragile areas and local communities, it further increases our reliance on oil - the main fossil fuel responsible for climate change.

In the last several months, the controversy surrounding the OCP has generated extensive negative publicity in the national and international media. Concerns over the direct impact of the project on the environment, health and livelihood of local populations have ignited street protests, occupations of government offices, legal actions, a general strike in Lago Agrio and blockades of construction machinery. Affected communities have vowed to escalate their demonstrations and seek legal remedies to delay and cancel the project. 

To date, the Ecuadorian Government's response to growing public protest has been to threaten those the government considers as leaders of the opposition to the project. The OCP consortium and the Ecuadorian government are refusing to listen to the country's rejection of the pipeline and the OCP even used physical violence against protesters. In the end of August 2001 a group of female environmentalists were violently assaulted as they tried to peacefully occupy the OCP offices. In the midst of a violent struggle, cameras of the journalists covering the demonstration were destroyed. The company's security agents took possession of photographic equipment and films in an attempt to prevent coverage of the incident.

With this incident the OCP Consortium has given a clear indication of its approach to Ecuadorians who exercise their legitimate right to protest against the company's operational irregularities. To the company's record of corruption and illegalities, we can now add violence against women.

Reflecting growing public and investor concern over the financing of environmentally and socially destructive projects, corporations, banks, institutional investors and investment funds have begun implementing investment screens and guidelines. The OCP pipeline is exemplary of the type of ecologically unsound project that would be excluded in most environmental and social investment screens.

Communities along the pipeline route and in the Amazon are concerned that the process of public consultation has been fundamentally flawed. The Ecuadorian Constitution requires prior consultation with affected communities. In this case, consultation is taking place after the route has already been defined in the OCP contract, attempting to justify a decision already made. Other groups are also calling for an independent international review to be carried out which properly evaluates the yet un-addressed long-term impacts. 

The signatories of this letter recognize that Ecuador's oil exports are primarily destined for consumption in the United States, particularly in California, and are committed to informing the North American public of the true costs of oil imported from Ecuador. Instead of financing expansion of the oil industry into fragile areas, we encourage Westdeutsche Landesbank to invest in the development of clean renewable energy alternatives. This is the only truly economically and environmentally sustainable way forward for safeguarding against the perils of climate change.

Recognizing that there is a strong and still growing movement in Ecuador for the cancellation of the OCP contract, we urge you to: 

1) Suspend the $900 million loan to the OCP ltd. consortium; and 

2) Adopt a policy to exclude all oil exploration and production activities in ecologically and culturally sensitive regions; in particular, refrain from new oil investments in the Amazon rainforest.  

We and the future generations who will inherit this earth appreciate your leadership and foresight in ensuring that your banks' lending does not lead to the irreversible destruction of the Amazon, one of the Earth's most prized cultural and ecological treasures. We would appreciate a response to the questions, and demands presented in this letter and request information about your corporations' social and environmental policies until 24th of September, 2001. 

Respectfully,

 

World Bank sticks to proposals for ethnocidal resettlement policy

Last chance to lobby decision-makers related to new World Bank policy on resettlement!!

The Bank's resettlement policy is being sent for approval by its Board sometime during October 2001. This is the last chance to influence decision makers to amend this offensive policy. Please send a letter to your Executive Director to the World Bank, or your government minister dealing with international development, before mid October urging them to make changes to the final policy.

Please click here to see a copy of the letter that FPP sent today to the UK government minister responsible for international development regarding this issue.

The letter urges the UK government to table amendments to the policy to respect the right of indigenous peoples to prior informed consent and cultural integrity in accordance with international customary law. 

Other recommendations for improving this retrograde draft policy are made at the end of the letter.

For further background information see WRM August action alert.