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Speaker 1: slash drilled Free. Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 1: You might remember a few years back we did a
Speaker 1: season on Chevron and Ecuador and the long drawn out
Speaker 1: Saga of Folks living in the Ecuadorian Amazon, trying to
Speaker 1: get compensation for damages from Texico and then Chevron for
Speaker 1: dumping oil there. We talked in that episode about former
Speaker 1: Equadorian President Rafael Correa and his plan about a decade
Speaker 1: ago to try to get the world to pay Ecuador
Speaker 1: to keep oil in the ground in Yasuni National Park.
Speaker 1: Yasuni is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.
Speaker 1: It's also been a hotspot of oil production for quite
Speaker 1: some time. Last year, a big election made headlines all
Speaker 1: over the world when Ecuadorians voted to stop drilling in
Speaker 1: Yasuni National Park, or at least that's how it was reported. Today,
Speaker 1: reporter Macy Lipkin brings us the story of what's really
Speaker 1: been going on in Ecuador and Yasuni and what this
Speaker 1: vote meant, means, and will mean for the future of
Speaker 1: Ecuador and oil.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Northeast Ecuador, one of the most biodiverse places
Speaker 2: on Earth. Kelly Swing founded Tippuccini Biodiversity Station here in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties. He'd be the first to tell you
Speaker 2: how special this region is. Yasuni National Park is right
Speaker 2: across the river.
Speaker 3: A hectare of rainforest in Yasuni has probably around or
Speaker 3: maybe even over six hundred species of trees per hectare
Speaker 3: in the US, if you're in a mature forest in
Speaker 3: the eastern part of the country, you could walk in
Speaker 3: the entire morning and maybe not see ten species of trees.
Speaker 3: If we talk about birds, the Yese has close to
Speaker 3: six hundred species. If you look at the US and
Speaker 3: Canada together about eight hundred species cats. There are five
Speaker 3: species of felines in Yeseny, which is also pretty spectacular.
Speaker 3: Of course, when you say five, that doesn't sound like
Speaker 3: a gigang number, but if you're talking about cat species
Speaker 3: is an enormous number. Any place you impact, it's gonna
Speaker 3: affect more species than it would anywhere else on the planet.
Speaker 2: This biodiversity doesn't just make for a spectacular way through
Speaker 2: the jungle. It also bodes well from medicine.
Speaker 3: In business, people use hundreds of species of plants for
Speaker 3: different kinds of remedies. There are pharmaceutical products that have
Speaker 3: been derived from those things that are worth lots of money.
Speaker 3: Why couldn't there be one of those plants, you know,
Speaker 3: in Yasuni.
Speaker 2: Yasuni Is importance goes beyond even its biodiversity and potential
Speaker 2: for pharmaceuticals. Gonzalo Rivas Torres teaches ecology at the University
Speaker 2: of San Francisco in Quito. He says that Yasuni is
Speaker 2: key for human survival. Plants in the rainforest conduct photosynthesis
Speaker 2: and produce water vapor.
Speaker 4: Water vapor is then transforming into humidity that will go
Speaker 4: up right in the sky and then through winds will
Speaker 4: move towards the west and then it will hit theyend
Speaker 4: this right that is literally at this wall to the west.
Speaker 4: Then their you know, temperature drops. Also pressure is going
Speaker 4: to be different, and then you have precipitation, and all
Speaker 4: that precipitation is then filling up aquifers or the high
Speaker 4: and the enforced here we called paramols that are naterally
Speaker 4: sponges of this water. Un dam is going to be
Speaker 4: yield to big water resterours that is the main source
Speaker 4: for like millions of Equadorians, millions of South Americans.
Speaker 2: On paper, Yasnuni looks pretty well protected. It became a
Speaker 2: National park in nineteen seventy nine and the UNESCO Biosphere
Speaker 2: Reserve in nineteen eighty nine, but oil had already been
Speaker 2: discovered in the park by then. Currently seven active oil
Speaker 2: blocks overlap with the boundaries of the national park. That's
Speaker 2: despite the fact that in two thousand and eight, Ecuador
Speaker 2: became the first country in the world to ratify rights
Speaker 2: of nature and its constitution. You can learn more about
Speaker 2: that in detail in the first season of our sister podcast,
Speaker 2: Damages For Our Purposes. It's important to understand that the
Speaker 2: Ecuadorian Constitution states that nature or pachamama, where life is
Speaker 2: reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for
Speaker 2: its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its
Speaker 2: life cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes. But any underground
Speaker 2: resources belong to the government, so drilling happens anyway. Rights
Speaker 2: of nature be damned. Oil extraction has become less invasive
Speaker 2: over the years, but it still impacts everything that makes
Speaker 2: Yasuni special.
Speaker 3: The oil industry is far less extensive and expansive in
Speaker 3: its operations and impacts today than they were decades ago.
Speaker 2: Back then, deforestation was rampant, oil spills were more common.
Speaker 2: Oil companies built roads that led to overhunting, colonization, and
Speaker 2: noise pollution, all impacts that the region is still dealing
Speaker 2: with today.
Speaker 3: Technology has changed, They've incorporated different strategies, and a lot
Speaker 3: of those strategies benefit them financially too. But it's it's better,
Speaker 3: but it does not approach an idea that Rafael Coorea
Speaker 3: talked about during his time of we're only going to
Speaker 3: impact Uno porm, which is one tenth of one percent
Speaker 3: of the land area. It's like, how do you do that?
Speaker 2: Oil extraction produces natural gas, and oil companies burn that
Speaker 2: extra gas in big flames called gas flares. Ecuador banned
Speaker 2: gas flares in twenty twenty one because they appeared to
Speaker 2: cause cancer and the people who live nearby. But I
Speaker 2: saw multiple flames coming from different oil blocks in October
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, so I know that at least some
Speaker 2: polluting practices persist. That brings us back to twenty thirteen Ecuador.
Speaker 2: As president at the time, Rafael Correa made one of
Speaker 2: yasuin these oil blocks famous with his initiative to leave
Speaker 2: its oil underground. It was called Block forty three or
Speaker 2: the itt Block, named for the three oil fields inside it.
Speaker 2: Korea asked other countries to pay Ecuador three and a
Speaker 2: half billion dollars, about half the value of the oil
Speaker 2: to leave the forest there. Intact, the plan failed, and
Speaker 2: the ITT block opened in twenty sixteen. It's the most
Speaker 2: recent block to open in Yasuni and one of Ecuador's
Speaker 2: most productive. It's controversial because some of its crude is
Speaker 2: low quality and expensive to extract, meaning that it brings
Speaker 2: in little profit, and because it overlaps with what's called
Speaker 2: the Intangible Zone, an area designed to protect the rights
Speaker 2: of indigenous groups living in the forest involuntary isolation. When
Speaker 2: the ITT initiative failed, a group of young people called
Speaker 2: Yasunilos rallied to get Yasuni on the ballot. It took
Speaker 2: ten years, but it finally happened. This past August, Ecuadorians
Speaker 2: voted whether or not to stop drilling in the ITT block.
Speaker 2: Environmentalists argue that the rainforest was worth protecting. Petro Ecuador,
Speaker 2: the state run oil company that operates ITT, argued that
Speaker 2: the lost income would be catastrophic for the economy. The
Speaker 2: results were decisive. Almost sixty percent of Ecuadorians voted to
Speaker 2: stop drilling in ITT. This made international headlines as a
Speaker 2: win for the Amazon.
Speaker 1: Ecuadorians have voted to stop oil drilling in the Yasuni
Speaker 1: National Park, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet,
Speaker 1: which is part of the Amazon Rainforest.
Speaker 5: It was an environmental dilemma for an oil producing country,
Speaker 5: a dilemma of voters faced in last Sunday's vote. In
Speaker 5: the end, nearly six out of every ten voters chose
Speaker 5: to protect the Yasuni. We have saved that the greatest
Speaker 5: biodiversity that has been recognized and nationally and internationally. The
Speaker 5: leader of one of Yasunie indigenous community said.
Speaker 2: Hey, y but in Ecuador, even conservationists didn't know what
Speaker 2: would come of it after the break. What the referendum
Speaker 2: actually means for the itt block and for Yasuni as
Speaker 2: a whole.
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Speaker 2: The ballot question asked voters, do you agree that the
Speaker 2: Ecuadorian government should keep the crude in itt known as
Speaker 2: Block forty three underground indefinitely? In Spanish is daves de
Speaker 2: coude and guilbirno ecoano mantinga elkuns indefini de mine nossulo.
Speaker 2: Below the yes and no boxes was the fine print.
Speaker 2: If the yes vote wins, it said, there will be
Speaker 2: an organized progressive withdrawal of all activity related to oil
Speaker 2: extraction within a year of the notification of the official results. Additionally,
Speaker 2: the state will not be able to take action toward
Speaker 2: initiating new contracts to continue the exploitation of it. The
Speaker 2: vote passed, but some loud voices said the government could
Speaker 2: ignore it. In early September, a video surfaced of then
Speaker 2: President Guillermo Lasso saying the vote was unenforceable. Separately, the
Speaker 2: Minister of Energy and Minds said the outcome depended only
Speaker 2: on the vote in the province where it is located,
Speaker 2: not in the country as a whole. Odajana, province home
Speaker 2: to it, voted to keep drilling, so did its neighbors.
Speaker 2: Sukum more on that in a minute, Ecuador's twenty two
Speaker 2: other provinces voted to stop. If the minister were correct,
Speaker 2: then drilling would continue. In itt Environmental lawyer Ugo Achividia
Speaker 2: says the government was talking about a consulta previa, a
Speaker 2: different kind of vote that allows indigenous Equadorians and Afro
Speaker 2: Ecuadorians to vote on projects that may impact their ancestral homelands.
Speaker 2: He says that the vote on drilling was a consulta popular,
Speaker 2: a national vote that is final madraza de los pronoun
Speaker 2: regardless of what the politicians say. It's a final decision
Speaker 2: that has to be obeyed. Legally, it has to be
Speaker 2: obeyed and will be obeyed. The timeline for closing down
Speaker 2: ITT caused even more confusion. PetroEcuador asked the Constitutional Court
Speaker 2: for three years to stop drilling, but the court stuck
Speaker 2: to one. The court also demanded that within the same
Speaker 2: time frame, the oil company start repairing the forest where
Speaker 2: it had drilled. In mid November, Petro Ecuador announced that
Speaker 2: it will stop drilling in ITT on August thirty first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, that's the day of the court's deadline.
Speaker 2: It plans to extract eleven million more barrels of oil
Speaker 2: by them, which is slower than peak production, but it's
Speaker 2: still unclear how long Petro Ecuador has to remove its
Speaker 2: equipment and what it means to repair the forest. Fifty
Speaker 2: nine percent of voters across Ecuador voted to stop drilling
Speaker 2: in ITT, but in the province of Vodajana, where the
Speaker 2: ITT block is located, residents voted to keep drilling fifty
Speaker 2: eight to forty two percent. The big reason was jobs.
Speaker 2: Ramiro San Miguel has worked as a guide at Tipputini
Speaker 2: Biodiversity Station for more than twenty years. His face lights
Speaker 2: up when he spots monkeys. He led my group trampling
Speaker 2: off the trail just to get a better look. That's
Speaker 2: Ramiro imitating the wily monkeys call. In some of my recordings,
Speaker 2: I can't tell which noises come from Ramiro and which
Speaker 2: are for monkeys. Before coming to Tipputini, Romeiro capped in
Speaker 2: the barge for an oil company. He's seen firsthand what
Speaker 2: oil extraction does to the forest is.
Speaker 7: Simpre the guy.
Speaker 2: Whenever there's drilling, there's a big impact, primarily in deforestation.
Speaker 7: Habitais yes, I'll gok okay.
Speaker 2: They destroy certain animals' habitats. Now we're dealing with global
Speaker 2: warming from so much deforestation, so much burning of gases.
Speaker 1: Sequences.
Speaker 2: But when it came to the I t T referendum,
Speaker 2: Romiro voted to keep drilling. He worries about what his
Speaker 2: sons will do if they lose their jobs.
Speaker 8: Then go.
Speaker 7: And lunus capitatos maginista transportang los Caro.
Speaker 2: I have two sons who work at Block forty three.
Speaker 2: They work on the barges. One's a captain and the
Speaker 2: others an engineer. If they're going to stop drilling, what
Speaker 2: will they do? Where will they work? It's something I've
Speaker 2: asked myself and sometimes mentioned to my colleagues. These people,
Speaker 2: where are they going to find work? It's a little complicated.
Speaker 2: Other folks I talked to were frustrated that people far
Speaker 2: away in Quito who work off his jobs and don't
Speaker 2: understand life in the Amazon voted to stop drilling when
Speaker 2: they benefit from oil money too, and some people were
Speaker 2: confused by the wording of the referendum. One man he
Speaker 2: voted yes because the region needed oil jobs, but the
Speaker 2: yes vote was to stop drilling. Others suspected that the
Speaker 2: government would ignore the vote and drill anyway. Some cited
Speaker 2: a debunked conspiracy theory that Peru could extract the oil
Speaker 2: with some kind of horizontal pipe. My taxi driver voted
Speaker 2: to stop drilling, but thought the vote to keep drilling
Speaker 2: had won. PetroEcuador has argued that it's helped the communities
Speaker 2: where it drills. It has built hospitals and schools, and
Speaker 2: provided water filters. To indigenous families, but some folks in Coca,
Speaker 2: the capital of Odajana Province, are frustrated because they don't
Speaker 2: feel the benefits. They only see oil money leave the region.
Speaker 2: One man pointed out that there's not a single university
Speaker 2: in the province of Odajana. Other residents have experienced the
Speaker 2: downsides of oil extraction, like oil spills firsthand. Jose Makania
Speaker 2: is also a guide. It to Buccini. He grew up
Speaker 2: in an indigenous Quichua community moved to Coca for high school.
Speaker 2: One morning, he went to bathe in the river before
Speaker 2: walking the two hours to school.
Speaker 8: Mayana Ante saliarmi Io fil Rio Scuro viving in trail Rio.
Speaker 2: I got in the river to bathe one morning and
Speaker 2: came out a little black. The river was full of oil.
Speaker 2: The pipeline had broken your Coca. My dad saw me
Speaker 2: covered in that black stuff and told.
Speaker 8: Me it was oil Petrolia.
Speaker 2: Jose later worked for an oil exploration company. His job
Speaker 2: was to make sure the other workers didn't do too
Speaker 2: much damage to the forest while creating trails, but he
Speaker 2: saw how underground explosions which were set off to find
Speaker 2: out whether there was oil in the ground scared the animals.
Speaker 8: Los animos borquesta group was esperando but yeahando, yeah says yeah,
Speaker 8: you're kles pass.
Speaker 2: The animals were scared. They went crazy, running in all
Speaker 2: directions without knowing where to go. The monkeys screamed. It
Speaker 2: made me so sad that I.
Speaker 8: Said no more, no mass, no mas.
Speaker 3: Jose left the.
Speaker 2: Oil company and became a guide to Tippuccini sixteen years ago.
Speaker 2: Four years in he came face to face with a
Speaker 2: black panther. That's his favorite wildlife encounter to date. It
Speaker 2: was like a dream for me seeing the black jaguar,
Speaker 2: the black panther. Jose voted to stop drilling in the
Speaker 2: I T T Block and was glad the referendum passed.
Speaker 8: Is tamo vibn tiendos impacto los cambia klimatic pediril mundo uyatos.
Speaker 2: Well living and feeling the effects of climate change. I'd
Speaker 2: ask the world to promote caring for nature, because it's
Speaker 2: everybody's lung, not just Latin Americans or Amazonians. The world
Speaker 2: is for everyone. Indeed, the referendum was celebrated around the
Speaker 2: world as a step toward protecting nature and slowing climate change,
Speaker 2: but the vote only stops extraction in one oil block.
Speaker 2: When ITT closes, six others will still overlap Yasuni National Park,
Speaker 2: and there are dozens more around Ecuador. The vote doesn't
Speaker 2: affect trilling in any of those blocks. The good news
Speaker 2: is that closing ITT will leave about seven hundred million
Speaker 2: barrels of oil underground. That oil alone means three million
Speaker 2: metric tons of carbon dioxide won't be emitted to the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: But the symbolic impact of this referendum maybe even stronger.
Speaker 2: Here's Kelly swing again.
Speaker 3: Yes to me, probably eighty percent of that land area
Speaker 3: is still pretty much what it was one hundred years
Speaker 3: ago or three hundred years ago. When you see, you know,
Speaker 3: the people turn out and vote for something like this,
Speaker 3: you say, oh, this is not a lost cause. There's
Speaker 3: plenty out there to save, and there's plenty of interest
Speaker 3: in saving it.
Speaker 2: Oil has been Ecuador's biggest export for fifty years. It
Speaker 2: spurred huge economic growth in the seventies. The country sends
Speaker 2: a good chunk of oil to the US too. It's
Speaker 2: California's second largest source of crude. But that oil won't
Speaker 2: last forever. By some estimates, Ecuador will become a net
Speaker 2: importer of oil by twenty thirty one. Ecuador will have
Speaker 2: to outgrow its oil dependency sooner or later. The referendum
Speaker 2: means that that move is coming early for itt. Carlos
Speaker 2: Larrea is an economist to help design Gorrea's proposal to
Speaker 2: leave the IT block untouched back in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: He says the most important thing for Ecuador's economy is
Speaker 2: to diversify.
Speaker 9: Oil has been the most important single export product for
Speaker 9: about fifty years, and Ecuador badly needs a policy of
Speaker 9: economic diversification. And our position is that actually the most
Speaker 9: important endowments of ecuadors its biodiversity and its cultural diversity
Speaker 9: and richness. Ecuador needs to preserve nature in the future
Speaker 9: in order to survive as a peaceable country.
Speaker 2: Larrea points to growing exports from the Amazon, like chocolate
Speaker 2: and guayusa, a plant that's brewed like tea. The region
Speaker 2: could also expand its tourism sector, though Ecuador's recent increase
Speaker 2: in crime might scare off potential visitors. La ree stress
Speaker 2: that diversification is key, not just shifting dependence from one
Speaker 2: export to another. He doesn't want to see Ecuador rely
Speaker 2: too heavily on another product or service that could run out,
Speaker 2: lose value, or get shut down by a popular vote.
Speaker 2: Gonzolo Rivestors. The ecologist sees the ITT result as an
Speaker 2: opportunity for Ecuador to take control of its future.
Speaker 4: It is a precedent for whatever can happen, and I
Speaker 4: think also opens now the door to have the discussion
Speaker 4: on what to do next, because in twenty years is
Speaker 4: not going to be Ecuadorians voting to the old companies
Speaker 4: to leave. The old companies are are going to be
Speaker 4: gone because there's not going to be more oil to stract.
Speaker 4: So I think now is a good moment. If you
Speaker 4: ask me once you know I tit or wild ITTs
Speaker 4: retired that we said, okay, what is coming next for Jamison.
Speaker 2: Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This episode was
Speaker 2: reported and written by me Macy Lipkin. Our senior editors
Speaker 2: are Alien Brown and Sarah Ventry.
Speaker 6: Our senior producer is Martin Saltz.
Speaker 10: Austwick, who also does our sound design and compose most
Speaker 10: of the music in this episode.
Speaker 2: The episode was mixed and mastered by Peter Duff.
Speaker 6: Fact checking by Wudan jan Al Atwick is by Matt Fleming.
Speaker 10: Our first time in My attorney is James Wheedon.
Speaker 2: The show was created by Amy Westerboldt, who also helped
Speaker 2: edit this episode.
Speaker 10: You can find related videos, photos, and print stories for
Speaker 10: this series, along with all the documentation that we have
Speaker 10: to go along with the series, at drill dot Media.
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