A team of workers on the oil-contaminated water in Esmeraldas. Photo: Petroecuador/X.
By Pablo Meriguet – Mar 20, 2025
On March 13, a section of the SOTE pipeline, owned by the state-owned company Petroecuador, ruptured in Esmeraldas, a province of Ecuador. The failure occurred after a landslide in Achiote, near Quinindé. Several experts have stated that it is one of the worst oil spills in recent years in the country. As of now, the government of Daniel Noboa has not disclosed the number of barrels of oil spilled in Esmeraldas.
The Executive has declared an emergency in Esmeraldas due to the seriousness of the spill, which gravely affects the sector’s flora and fauna and the local population, which depends on the rivers for drinking water and fishing. The spill affected five rivers. According to the Secretariat of Environment, at least 80 kilometers of the Esmeraldas River are affected. The latest reports indicate that the oil-blackened water has reached Quinindé and Esmeraldas, the capital of the northwestern province.
Sabotage or mismanagement?
In an interview in Teleamazonas, the Secretary of Energy, Inés Manzano, affirmed that the spill occurred due to sabotage, according to a police intelligence report. She also warned the Mayor of Quito, Ecuador’s capital, Pabel Muñoz (a member of the Correista and opposition party, Citizen Revolution): “The information we have is that [there could be sabotage] in Papallacta, the source of Quito’s drinking water. So to Mayor Pabel Muñoz, tell the people who are sabotaging that this is prohibited,” implying that Muñoz knows those responsible and that it was committed to discredit Noboa’s government.
The declarations of Secretary Manzano have caused much controversy. Muñoz, through an official statement, has requested that Secretary Manzano, following the law, inform and denounce the persons who, according to her, are behind the alleged sabotage. In addition, he requested that the Secretary of Defense militarize the facilities where Papallacta’s water is stored.
For her part, Luisa González, presidential candidate for the Citizen Revolution, said that the accusation of sabotage is nothing more than an excuse by the government for its poor management of the environmental crisis: “Before every crisis, the same excuse. They are embarrassing. Electric Crisis: They accused their cabinet of SABOTAGE, they pointed out the former Secretary of Energy, Andrea Arrobo, and justified her ineptitude. They said that a possum caused the blackouts and that someone opened imaginary floodgates. THE RESULT: months of inhuman outages and a paralyzed country. Spill in Esmeraldas: Now they blame [alleged] sabotage for the environmental disaster. THEY DID NOT REPAIR [the oil installations], they fired technicians and let the oil devastate rivers and communities. Everything [the Noboa government] touches, it destroys. THEY HAVE SABOTAGED THE COUNTRY. No more excuses, no more lies.”
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For his part, President Noboa, who is currently running for re-election, has promised that the State will assume responsibility for the damages after the portentous oil spill: “Unlike in the past, this time [the State] will respond for its actions with the obligation to make the remediation in Esmeraldas. That is why it will create a fund with two objectives: environmental remediation and reparations to all the affected families.”
However, various settlers have criticized the delay in the national government’s actions, as well as the poor management of the natural disaster which may have affected more than 400,000 people. Several protests have been held in the towns that have been left without water supply demanding that the state act. “Where is [President] Daniel Noboa? We want him here. When he needs our vote, they come to the poor, but when he wins the elections he forgets about us. Where is the president!” demands one of the protesters with no water to drink.
In other videos, the victims can be seen collecting water from wells and denouncing that, so far, the State has not delivered water for their survival. Meanwhile, several people are taking advantage of the situation by selling a few liters of water at high prices. “We don’t know if the water we are collecting is contaminated with oil. We are taking a risk. No technician has come to our village to tell us if we can drink this water. Necessity forces us!” said an inhabitant of La Tolita.
For now, given the little reaction from the central and local governments, several civil organizations have launched campaigns throughout the country to collect water and food for the affected population.
An environmental tragedy
Several scientists have called the spill an ecological tragedy since it is estimated that in the Viche and Caple rivers, almost all the animals that inhabited their waters have died. In this regard, Eduardo Rebolledo, professor at the Catholic University of Ecuador, told the newspaper Primicias that the Viche and Caple are now “dead rivers”: “As a biologist, I feel sadness, because where there used to be fish, today there are containment nets and black water, without life, it is unpleasant…When we talk about dead rivers, it is a term I used to understand the azoic condition, that is, that the rivers lack life temporarily.”
According to Rebolledo, about 250 fish and other animals are affected by the spill. Regarding the magnitude and impact of the damage, the researcher from the Catholic University affirmed “Oil continues to be removed from this site, and, so far, we do not know how much has been spilled, because they do not inform. I don’t understand why the authorities hide the information… There is no mathematical formula that tells us [how long the recovery will last], it could last 30 or 45 days, it is going to depend on how fast and efficient the cleanup is, and on how benign nature is and helps us with rain.”
However, he also stated to Primicias that there may be long-term damage “An oil spill is always accompanied by heavy metals, which leave a trace over time and accumulate in the sediments. These metals can cause malformations and problems in aquatic life. Although each case has to be studied individually, there is a lot of literature that tells us that the persistence of heavy metals in marine life is associated with degenerative diseases for humans.”
