BBC investigative reports raises concerns about Ecopetrol links to armed actors and threats against FEDEPESAN
Photo: PBI-Canada visited with Yuly Velásquez and toured the San Silvestre wetland with FEDEPESAN, CREDHOS and PBI-Colombia in June 2022.
A new BBC Eye Investigations report by Owen Pinnell titled “Oil giant’s leaked data reveals ‘awful’ pollution” raises significant questions about Ecopetrol polluting sources of drinking water in Colombia, their use of private security and possible links with armed groups, and the threats experienced by water protectors.
Ecopetrol pollutes
The BBC reports: “Colombian energy giant Ecopetrol has polluted hundreds of sites with oil, including water sources and biodiverse wetlands.”
“Data leaked by a former employee [and now whistleblower Andrés Olarte] reveals more than 800 records of these sites from 1989 to 2018, and indicates the company had failed to report about a fifth of them. The BBC has also obtained figures showing the company has spilled oil hundreds of times since then.”
The article also highlights: “Ecopetrol’s main refinery stretches along on the banks of the Magdalena River near Barrancabermeja The data from the regulator includes hundreds of spills in the Barrancabermeja area where [Yuly Velásquez, the president of the Federation of Artisanal, Environmentalist, and Touristic Fishermen and Women of Santander (FEDEPESAN) and other fishers] live [and depend on the waters for their livelihoods].”
FEDEPESAN is accompanied by the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (CREDHOS), which is accompanied by Peace Brigades International.
Photo of Ecopetrol refinery as seen from the San Silvestre wetland. The bottle contains a sample of oil tainted water taken from the wetland that day. Photo by PBI-Canada.
Threats against Velásquez and FEDEPESAN
The BBC article further reports: “[Velásquez] and her colleagues have been monitoring biodiversity in the area’s wetlands, which feed into the Magdalena River. Ms. Velásquez and seven other people also told the BBC they had received death threats after challenging Ecopetrol. She said an armed group had fired warning shots at her house and spray-painted the word ‘leave’ on the wall.”
The article adds: “Ms. Velásquez remains determined to continue speaking out, despite the threats. ‘If we don’t go fishing, we don’t eat,’ she said. ‘If we speak and report, we are killed… And if we don’t report, we kill ourselves, because all these incidents of heavy pollution are destroying the environment around us.’”
Photo: Velásquez with PBI on June 30, 2022, just days before an armed attack against her and her bodyguard (standing just behind her in the photo) on July 5, 2022.
Ecopetrol, private security and armed groups
This BBC article also notes: “Mr. Olarte [the former Ecopetrol employee] has [also] shared internal Ecopetrol emails showing that in 2018, the company paid a total of $65m to more than 2,800 private security companies.”
“Matthew Smith, an oil analyst and financial journalist based in Colombia, says he does not believe Ecopetrol managers are involved in threats by armed groups. But he says there is an ‘immense’ overlap between former paramilitary groups and the private security sector. Private security firms often employ former members of paramilitary groups and compete for lucrative contracts to protect oil facilities, he says.”
The article continues: “‘There is always that risk of some sort of contagion between the private security companies, the types of people they employ, and their desire to continually maintain their contract,’ Mr. Smith says. He says this could potentially even include kidnapping or murdering community leaders or environmental defenders in order to ‘ensure that Ecopetrol’s operations proceed smoothly’.”
“[Felipe Bayón, Chief Executive Officer of Ecopetrol from 2017 to 2023,] said he was ‘convinced that the checks and due diligence were done’ regarding the company’s relationships with private security companies. Ecopetrol says it has never had relationships with illegal armed groups. It says it has a strong due diligence process and carries out human rights impact assessments for its activities.”
Other allegations of paramilitary links
In May 2022, Al Jazeera reported: “Local environmental defenders and a representative of the JEP [Special Jurisdiction for Peace] told Al Jazeera that they suspected a connection between the paramilitary groups intimidating them and the state-owned Ecopetrol, which is behind the fracking project. The company has been accused of having ties with the Gulf Clan [AGC] specifically.”
At that same time, on this PBI-Canada webinar, Carolina Agón, a member of the CREDHOS human rights committee, stated: “This is not a secret. Ecopetrol has ties and is working hand in hand with the illegal armed groups.”
Juan Camilo Delgado of CREDHOS also commented on that webinar: “It’s very concerning when we look at the historic relationship between the oil companies and organized illegal groups, specifically paramilitary structures, which has led to human rights violations and attacks against social leaders and environmental leaders from the municipality of Puerto Wilches [48 kilometres north of Barrancabermeja].”
Photo of participants in the PBI-Canada webinar.
Ecopetrol ownership
The BBC article adds: “Ecopetrol, which is 88% owned by the Colombian state and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.”
The searchable database on the Banking on Climate Chaos website shows that the Canadian bank Scotiabank is the largest source of finance for Ecopetrol.
Amounts are in millions USD.
On that May 2022 PBI-Canada webinar, Bronwen Tucker of Oil Change International also noted: “Since 2012, Export Development Canada has given CAD $1.4 billion in government backed loans to oil and gas in Colombia. This is 44 per cent of all G20 international public finance for energy in Colombia in this period.”
We continue to follow this.
Photo: PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson, Yuly Velásquez, and now PBI-Canada Board member Javier Garate, near Barrancabermeja, June 30, 2022.
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