Indigenous protest against the XI Grand Oil Round

Anti-riot Police Officers guarding the entrance of the Hotel.

About 100 Ecuadorian indigenous, carrying drums and spears, made clear their disagreement with the beginning of the XI Grand Oil Round of new oil fields in the Amazon region.

The Indigenous, carrying signs reading “Oil and mining, the same crap“, gathered at the door of a hotel in Quito, where they celebrate the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Energy and Petroleum, and where it is expected that president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, formally opens the bidding today.

Delfin Tenesaca, Ecuarunari president, said: “The aim is to loot all our resources, the environment gets harmed, the rivers and the jungle get polluted.”

The Government today will open the bidding of thirteen blocks (fields), with estimated reserves of between 370 and 1,600 million barrels of heavy oil. (MZ)