QUITO, (Reuters) – Ecuador will lose $1.2 billion in oil income per year if a proposal to bar production in one of its major oil blocks is successful at the ballot box in August, the energy minister said yesterday.
Ecuadoreans, who will also choose a new president and legislature in the vote, will decide whether production should be banned at the 43-ITT block in the Yasuni region of the Amazon.
State oil company Petroecuador gradually began production at the block, which includes the Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini fields, in 2016.
The referendum, requested by environmental collective Yasunidos in 2013, was approved by the constitutional court last month.
“The backers of the request for crude to remain underground made it ten years ago when there wasn’t anything. 10 years later we find ourselves with 55,000 barrels per day, that’s 20 million barrels per year,” Energy Minister Fernando Santos told local radio.
“At $60 a barrel that’s $1.2 billion,” he added. “It could cause huge damage to the country,” he said, referring to economic damage and denying there has been environmental harm.
Yasunidos has said the referendum is meant to protect two Waorani Indigenous communities who live in voluntary isolation in Yasuni and to care for the region’s biodiversity.
The Waorani have said they will back a yes vote because the fields have not contributed to their community’s development.
The Yasuni was declared a Biosphere reserve by the United Nations in 1989 and is home to at least 2,000 species of trees and bushes, 204 species of mammals, 610 species of birds, 121 species of reptiles, 150 species of amphibians and 250 species of fish.
