Ecuador begins hydraulic fracturing in the Amazon rainforest.
Kate Hairsine with AFP, EFE
04/30/2026April 30, 2026
Ecuador is pushing to increase its production of crude oil but faces a backlash from environmentalists and Indigenous groups.
Ecuador has started fracking in the Amazon rainforest for the first time, state oil company Petroecuador said Wednesday.
The new hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, project is in the Amazonian province of Sucumbios on Ecuador's border with Colombia.
The fracking at a new well on Block 57 - Shushufindi Libertador represents "milestone " for oil production in the country, the Ministry of Environment and Energy said in a statement released on Wednesday.
The new well is in full production, producing more than 930 barrels a day, the ministry of said.
The project is being jointly conducted with a subsidiary of China's national petroleum corporation, CCDC.
What is fracking?
Fracking entails extracting natural gas and petroleum from subterranean bedrock.
It is criticized for using industrial quantities of water to break open rocks as well as causing chemical contamination and provoking micro-earthquakes.
Ecuador pushing to ramp up oil production
Ecuador's crude oil production fell to around 466,000 barrels a day in January 2026, a 13% drop from the same period a decade earlier. Analysts point to aging infrastructure and years of underinvestment as part of the problem.
Oil revenues make up a significant amount of Ecuador's export earnings.
The government of President Daniel Noboa has promised more funds for oil exploration and infrastructure and to attract greater foreign oil investments.
At the same time, his government's push to expand oil exploration, particularly in the Amazon, has alarmed environmentalists and Indigenous leaders.
Edited By:
Zac Crellin
kate Hairsine Report and Senior editor
De: feedback.english@dw.com
Deate: 3 de agosto de 2026 a las 8:49:00 a. m. ECT
For: mariana@iamselva.org
:Subject: Ecuador starts fracking in Amazon rainforest
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Editorial
By:
A Hummingbird Named Vida
Petroecuador has just announced a historic shift in Ecuador's petroleum policy. In partnership with CCDC, a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corporation, the State carried out its first hydraulic fracturing operation in Block 57, Shushufindi-Libertador, targeting the Caliza A geological formation in Sucumbíos Province. More significantly, Petroecuador declared that the operation had opened "a new horizon" for expanding this technology to other Ecuadorian oilfields.
This announcement marks far more than the introduction of a new extraction technique. It signals Ecuador's entry into a new era of oil development in which underground rock formations are deliberately fractured to access reserves that conventional production could not economically exploit. Such a decision deserves the broadest public debate, particularly when it concerns one of the world's most biologically important rainforest ecosystems.
The timing is deeply troubling. While the Noboa Government celebrates a new frontier in petroleum extraction, it has yet to demonstrate that it can effectively manage the environmental consequences of the oil infrastructure already operating in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The continuing produced-water disaster in the Cuyabeno remains unresolved months after it began. If the State has been unable to contain a major environmental emergency using existing technology, why should Ecuadorians—or the international community—be expected to place their confidence in a far more technically demanding form of oil extraction?
This is therefore not simply a debate about hydraulic fracturing. It is a question of governance, scientific transparency and public trust. Before opening a new chapter in Amazonian oil exploitation, the Government must first demonstrate that it can responsibly manage the one it already has.
Long before Ecuador became a republic, before the first maps gave names to its rivers, the Amazon had already perfected the quiet rhythm of life. For thousands of years, forests rose and fell, rivers changed their course, and countless generations of plants, animals and Indigenous peoples sustained an unbroken continuity that no government could create and no generation has the right to squander.
Every generation inherits that living legacy for only a brief moment before passing it on. Whether the Noboa Government will be remembered as the administration that opened a new era of increasingly invasive oil extraction—or as the one that recognised that some places possess a value beyond the resources beneath them—is a decision that history has not yet written.
Illegal Gold Mining in Yasuní: A Constitutional Test for Ecuador
Yasuní National Park is internationally recognised as one of the most biologically diverse rainforest ecosystems on Earth. In 1989, Ecuador voluntarily sought and obtained UNESCO's designation of Yasuní as a Biosphere Reserve through the intergovernmental procedures of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme. By doing so, the Ecuadorian State accepted the international responsibility of conserving and managing Yasuní in accordance with the principles and objectives governing the World Network of Biosphere Reserves.
Those principles and objectives are directed towards the conservation of biodiversity, the maintenance of ecological integrity, scientific research and environmentally sustainable development. Industrial extractive activities that undermine the ecological values for which a Biosphere Reserve has been internationally recognised are inconsistent with, and contradict, the principles and objectives governing UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme.
Ecuador's international commitments are reinforced by its own Constitution, which recognises the Rights of Nature and imposes upon the State a constitutional duty to protect the nation's protected areas and biological heritage.
On 20 August 2023, the Ecuadorian people exercised their sovereign constitutional authority by approving a binding national referendum requiring the cessation of oil extraction in Block 43 (ITT) within Yasuní National Park. A binding referendum is not a political recommendation. It creates a constitutional obligation upon the Government to implement the sovereign will of the Ecuadorian people.
Yet, as of 28 July 2026, the available evidence indicates that approximately 55,000 to 57,000 barrels of crude oil continue to be extracted every day from Block 43—more than 20 million barrels each year—from the very oil field that the Ecuadorian people voted to leave permanently underground.
These facts demonstrate that the constitutional mandate expressed through the 2023 referendum has not yet been fully implemented. The continuing large-scale extraction of oil from Block 43 therefore constitutes compelling evidence that the sovereign will expressed by the Ecuadorian people has yet to be fully carried into effect.
Recent investigative reports broadcast by Ecuador's national television network, Ecuavisa (Channel 8) present further evidence of illegal gold mining within Yasuní National Park.
Taken together, the continued extraction of oil and the expansion of illegal gold mining reveal two converging threats to one of the world's greatest rainforest ecosystems.
They also raise profound constitutional and international questions concerning the responsibilities entrusted to the Government of President Daniel Noboa.
As Head of Government, President Daniel Noboa bears the constitutional responsibility for ensuring that Ecuador's Constitution is respected, that the democratic mandate expressed in the 2023 referendum is implemented, and that Ecuador fulfils the international conservation commitments it voluntarily accepted when Yasuní was recognised by UNESCO as a Biosphere Reserve.
These matters deserve urgent national attention and, if necessary, constitutional review. The protection of Yasuní is not merely an environmental issue. It is a constitutional obligation owed to the Ecuadorian people and an international responsibility owed to humanity.
For more than two years, the Ecuadorian people have been waiting for the promise they made to themselves to become reality.
Yet every sunrise still carries tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil out of Yasuní, while new reports reveal that gold is now leaving the same forest through another open wound.
Constitutions can be ignored. Referendums can be delayed. International commitments can be neglected. But the rainforest keeps its own calendar. Every day that passes, another fragment of one of Earth's greatest living forests disappears into history.
One day the last barrel of oil will leave Yasuní.
When that day arrives, may there still remain a Yasuní worthy of the name that inspired Ecuador to seek its recognition as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve—and worthy of the promise its own people made to protect it forever.
For further information please open the following two investigative reports by Ecuavisa: