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Ok, this is great, now they want to drill for oil in the Darien, one of the world’s oldest and protected rainforests. Some of these officials need to go see what happened in the Amazon when they let the oil companies come into their rainforests. It could make the BP disaster look small (The US Government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels from the BP well “Deepwater Horizon”). Between 1964 and 1990, Texaco (which Chevron acquired in 2001) drilled for oil in a remote northern region of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest called the Oriente. The company deliberately dumped 18.5 billion gallons of highly toxic waste sludge into the streams and rivers on which local people depend for drinking, bathing, and fishing. They have yet to come back and clean it up.
Oh well, here is another story that tells everyone it will be good for the country.
Projections are that new permits will be granted for oil and gas exploration in the province of Darien and on the Caribbean coast.
Victor Urrutia, Secretary of Energy, told Prensa.com that “… Previously preliminary surveys were carried out, but now the goal is to determine the commercial potential of the points that have been detected in the past. Colombia has large reserves of oil and gas and it is possibly that on the border with Panama deposits also exist. ”
“… A study by the Venezuelan firm OTS indicates that Panama could exceed 900 million barrels and its exploitation could generate about $15 billion over the next 20 years. “” … A percentage of the gas would stay in the country and the another would be sold or be stored if there were surpluses. ”
Source: Prensa.com