MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Protests in Ecuador shut oil exports

Ecuador's state-run oil company Petroecuador suspended on Tuesday crude exports following violent protests that forced the closing of the country's main pipeline, said Petroecuador executive Eduardo Naranjo.

Damages caused by protestors who occupied one of the pumping stations from the Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System (SOTE) in the Amazon region Napo province shut Ecuador's daily exports of 144.000 barrels.

Protestors are demanding more funds from the country's oil wealth for infrastructure and jobs in the province.

Petroecuador declared that "circumstances beyond our control in the industry", had forced the postponement of shipments because the "security reserve" of crude to meet domestic demand had dropped to a critical level.

In Ecuador, the affected pipeline ships 380,000 bpd from the Amazon to the port of Balao in the north-west of the country. Petroecuador said the pipeline would be down for 24 to 36 hours, but a private pipeline with a 500,000 bpd capacity continued operating normally.

Ecuador, which is not a member of the Opec cartel of oil producing nations, is the fifth biggest oil producer in South America extracting 532,000 barrels of oil a day.

A total of 37% is extracted by Petroecuador, the rest by private companies. Last autumn, a protest in the same region stopped Ecuador's daily exports of crude oil for two weeks. Oil sales account for about a quarter of Ecuador's GDP and 35% of the budget's revenue.

Ecuador's current situation plus the nuclear crisis in Iran and the armed uprising in Nigeria again boosted international prices which had been falling for the last week.