Ecuador launches campaign to keep oil underground

Ecuador offered on Tuesday to drop plans to develop the country’s biggest oilfield if wealthy nations pay it to safeguard pristine land near the proposed drill site.

Leftist President Rafael Correa hopes developed countries and environmental groups will pay the poor South American nation about $350 million annually to leave the oil in the ground and reduce carbon dioxide emissions to slow global warming.
“We are willing to do this sacrifice, but for not free,” Correa said. “This is an insignificant figure compared to what is spent on the Iraq war.”

He said Ecuador would create a trust fund for donations. The government would also accept pardons of bilateral and multilateral lenders debt as payment.

Correa, an ally who has followed the nationalist wave led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, says Ecuador will give donors until next year to make offers. Otherwise it will develop the oilfield, which could generate thousands of job in South America’s fifth-largest oil producer.

The $350 million Ecuador is seeking is about half of the annual revenues it believes it would make from the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oilfield, which the government says holds reserves of more than 1 billion barrels.

Part of the ITT oilfield is inside the 2,427-acre (982-hectare) Yasuni National Park, where Amazon isolated indigenous groups live alongside rare jaguars and river dolphins.

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