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Lago Agrio is where it began in February 1967: Ecuador’s first oil well drilled by the US Texaco-Gulf consortium to ring in an era of black gold for the Ecuadoran Amazon.

“On that day, ministers and officials bathed in oil. Then they threw it in the river… a good start,” Donald Moncayo, coordinator of the Union of People Affected by Chevron-Texaco (Udapt), told AFP, ironically.

Fifty-six years later, the oil continues to flow, some 500 000 barrels per day that President Guillermo Lasso has vowed to double.

Oil is the South American country’s top export – generating some $13 billion per year.

That first well at Lago Agrio in Ecuador’s northeast closed in 2006 after generating nearly 10 million barrels.

But millions of hectares have been transformed – for better or worse – into Ecuador’s oil capital.

The region’s forests are receding as pollution spreads, activists claim – the landscape increasingly dominated by wells, pipelines, tanker trucks, oil flares and processing plants.

The government says oil income is essential for the country’s development, and that of its people.

But for Moncayo, who says he was born “200 meters from an oil well” 49 years ago, it is an industry synonymous with poverty and large-scale pollution.

He has led a long and difficult legal fight against Texaco since the 1990s.

The losing side

In 30 years of operation, the company dug 356 wells around Lago Agrio, each with retention ponds – 880 of them in total – holding a toxic sludge of oil waste and contaminated water.

Some 60 million litres of this liquid were discharged into the environment, according to Udapt, contaminating water used for fishing, bathing and drinking.

The open pits remain scattered throughout the forest today.

In 1993, some 30 000 residents of the Lago Agrio region sued Texaco, since bought by Chevron, in a New York Court.

The case was dismissed over misplaced jurisdiction, and the plaintiffs turned to the courts closer to home.

In 2011, Ecuador’s Supreme Court found in favour of the community and ordered the company to pay $9.5 billion in compensation for pollution of native lands.

But seven years later, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favour of Chevron and Texaco.

It found the Ecuador court’s judgment was in part “corruptly ‘ghostwritten'” by plaintiffs’ representatives who had promised a judge a bribe.

The residents have also failed in other court bids.

Chevron has said that Texaco spent $40 million on environmental cleanup in the area in the 1990, before selling its operations to state company Petroecuador.

And it argues that Petroecuador and the government are responsible for any remaining cleanup under the terms of the agreement of sale.

‘Mere crumbs’

Abandoned in 1994, the well “Agua-Rico 4” lies at the end of a narrow path through the jungle.

Nearby, a retention pond is covered in a thick layer of organic material which yields readily to a stick wielded by Moncayo to reveal a thick, black liquid.

A stream running past the pond is visibly soiled, and cows graze in places where black sludge oozes from the ground.

“It is like this everywhere,” said Moncayo, wearing stained surgical gloves.

Leaks also come from crude oil from pipelines – some 10 to 15 per month, according to a recent University of Quito study.

Petroecuador did not respond to requests from AFP for comment.

Lago Agrio residents complain of the noise and heat emitted from oil wells erected near their homes – they say without consultation or compensation – and the black smoke from oil flares that shoot several meters into the sky.

An Ecuador court recently ordered the closure of all 447 flare pits in the area by March, though few have been dismantled so far.

Conflicts between residents and Petroecuador are mainly resolved by ad hoc compensation payments or government undertakings to build infrastructure or expand services.

It is not always enough.

At the tiny settlement of Rio Doche 2, home to some 133 families, residents erected a metal barrier and dug holes in the road to block oil trucks from the well there.

“My chickens and ducks began to die. The well water darkened: it was impossible to drink or to use even for laundry. The girls had skin problems,” said Francesca Woodman, the owner of a small farm she said she was forced to leave with her eight children due to oil pollution.

“We, here, suffer the pollution, the leaks, the smoke of the chimneys, we inhale the dust of the (tanker) trucks, while they collect the dollars in Quito!” lamented another resident, Patricia Quinaloa.

But Rio Doche 2 also stands as a testament to the inherent rivalry between oil windfalls on the one hand, and pollution on the other.

“While we have a bit of work and money, even if it’s mere crumbs… people accept” the conditions, said Wilmer Pacheco, a driver for a local NGO.

Official data show that poverty rates in Ecuador’s three Amazonian petrol-producing provinces range from 44% to 68% – above the national average of 25%.

There is one very deep place on our planet it is called the Mariana Trench. You’ve probably already heard something about it before haven’t you. As we were all taught in school Everest is the highest place on earth and perhaps you learned that the Mariana Trench is the deepest and that is probably all you learned the average person’s education ends. There few are given a larger account of how and why of this mysterious of this you cannot imagine. What secrets this place hides and how strange are the creatures that live there this deep furrow in the earth is in the west of the Pacific Ocean near
the Mariana Islands from which its name is taken the Mariana Trench is a huge v-shaped trough 1500 kilometers long and more than 11,000 metres deep something as tall as Everest could easily be dropped into this vast end near bottomless channel while still leaving.

#eldddir #eldddir_ocean #eldddir_animals

Kansas City Chiefs RB Isiah Pacheco showed off the dance moves during a timeout break between the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and the Michigan Wolverines. 

A few videos ago I made a comment that you can’t actually know how long a coast is. Then someone said that Massachusetts has the longest coastline in the US, which seems weird considering its 1/20th the size of California. Are they wrong? Not really. But they’re not right either.

This is the curious problem with measuring coastlines, or in fact measuring anything on a map that follows something natural like a river or a mountain ridge…

They are as long or as short as you want them to be, just depends on how much you want to zoom in!

It’s called the coastline paradox and it makes sense if you think about it: natural features like coasts have an infinite amount of nooks, crannies, curves, and edges. The scale at which you choose to measure it determines its size.

Out here, Britain’s coast is 2800 km long measured at 100km units, but choose to measure the same coast with 50km units, and it’s now 3400 km long. It’s the same physical coastline, and neither measurement is officially “more accurate.”

In fact, unlike mm on a ruler or milliseconds on a stopwatch, a closer measurement of a coastline does not get closer to the truth, it only increases length, and theoretically it never stops increasing.

Therefore I say all coastlines are 100km long, take that Canada! 💪

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Powerful motor delivers 10000 max PSI to power through clogged grease fittings High-volume pump pushes up to 5.0 oz/min. high-flow applications Up to 16 cartridges per charge with a single DEWALT 20V MAX battery (4 Ah) Variable speed trigger offers precise control of the grease flow 42 in. Extra long and flexible hose designed for…

✨I do live streaming every Sunday at 11am(Japan time).Please come and watch.

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Ano ang KULITAN kung walang ENERGY?

Mag-Multivitamins(ENERVON)! Helps give more energy and immunity para tulungang maging masigla at di pagod, with proper diet and exercise vs non-use.

Buy Now! Available in drug stores nationwide.

If symptoms persist, consult your doctor.
ASC Ref Code: U161P081922ES