(11 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Quito, Ecuador – 11 March 2025
1. People protesting outside the Ministry of Energy and Mines UPSOUND (Spanish) "The Sacha (Oil field) won’t be sold, it will be defended"
2. People protesting UPSOUND (Spanish) "The people united will never be defeated."
3. Protesters speaking to press
4. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) David Almeida, leader of the National Association of Energy and Petroleum workers:
"The organizations, we have defined that we do not care that we are in an election campaign and that it affects them (the politicians) in their elections. For us it is more important to defend the Nation’s oil patrimony, and we are going to mobilize no matter what it takes, against any concession process of the (Sacha oil) field."
5. Protest sign reading (Spanish) "Riches with oil isn’t development"
6. Protest sign reading (Spanish) "Sacha (Oil field) won’t be sold, it will be defended"
7. Various of protesters with flags
STORYLINE:
Protesters gathered outside the Ministry of Energy and Mines in Quito on Tuesday, rallying against the awarding of the country’s largest oil field to a Chinese-Canadian consortium.
The authorities announced earlier this week that the Sacha oil field had been awarded to the consortium, which includes the transnational Sinopetrol, without a tender and for 20 years.
They argued that the field is more than half a century old and its infrastructure is at the limit of its useful life, which requires important economic investments that cannot be assumed by the state.
Sacha, located in the Ecuadorian Amazon, is considered one of the best fields with production of more than 77-thousand barrels of light crude oil per day. It has 50 wells located in an area of 355 square kilometres and has proven reserves of 367 million barrels of oil and 96 million cubic feet of gas.
The consortium is made up of Amodaimi Oil Company S.L., a subsidiary of China’s Sinopec, and Petrolia Ecuador, a subsidiary of Canada’s New Stratus Energy.
President Daniel Noboa said the day before that he expects the consortium to deliver an initial bond in six days before the signing of the contract, although days earlier the Minister of Energy, Inés Manzano, assured that the signing would take place in just over three weeks.
‘If they do not respond with the urgency that the Ecuadorian people deserve, we will analyse other options,’ warned the president, pointing out that the bond will be used for security, health and social investment.
His statement comes in the midst of an electoral process in which he is running against the leftist Luisa González for the ballot on 13 April.
AP Video shot by Cesar Olmos
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