BBC Ocular Investigations
BBCColombian power immense Ecopetrol has polluted loads of websites with oil, together with H2O resources and biodiverse wetlands, the BBC International Carrier has discovered.
Information leaked by way of a former worker unearths greater than 800 data of those websites from 1989 to 2018, and signifies the corporate had did not record a couple of 5th of them.
The BBC has additionally received figures appearing the corporate has spilled oil loads of occasions since later.
Ecopetrol says it complies absolutely with Colombian legislation and has industry-leading practices on sustainability.
The corporate’s primary refinery is in Barrancabermeja, 260km (162 miles) north of the Colombian capital Bogota.
The excess accumulation of processing crops, commercial chimneys and vault tanks stretches for similar to 2km (1.2 miles) alongside the banks of Colombia’s longest river, the Magdalena – a H2O supply for thousands and thousands of community.
Yuly VelásquezIndividuals of the fishing public there imagine oil air pollution is affecting flora and fauna within the river.
The broader section is house to endangered river turtles, manatees and spider monkeys, and is a part of a species-rich hotspot in one of the most global’s maximum biodiverse international locations. Within reach wetlands come with a secure house for jaguars.
When the BBC visited terminating June, households have been fishing in combination in waterways criss-crossed by way of oil pipelines.
One native stated one of the crucial fish they stuck excepted the smelly odor of crude oil as they have been cooked.
In playgrounds, a movie with iridescent swirls may well be obvious at the floor of the H2O – a particular signature of contamination by way of oil.
A fisherman dived i’m sick within the H2O and taken up a clump of crops caked in unlit slime.
Pointing to it, Yuly Velásquez, president of Fedepesan, a federation of fishing organisations within the area, stated: “This is all grease and waste that comes directly from the Ecopetrol refinery.”
Ecopetrol, which is 88% owned by way of the Colombian atmosphere and indexed at the Unused York Hold Alternate, rejects the fishers’ claims that it’s polluting the H2O.
In keeping with the BBC’s questions, it says it has environment friendly wastewater remedy techniques and efficient contingency plans for oil spills.
Andrés Olarte, the whistleblower who has shared the corporate’s knowledge, says air pollution by way of the company dates again a few years.
He joined Ecopetrol in 2017 and set to work as an abettor to the CEO. He says he quickly realised “something was wrong”.
Mr Olarte says he challenged managers about what he describes as “awful” air pollution knowledge, however used to be rebuffed with reactions corresponding to: “Why are you asking these questions? You’re not getting what this job is about.”
He left the corporate in 2019, and shared a immense quantity of corporate knowledge with US-based NGO the Environmental Investigation Company (EIA) and upcoming with the BBC. The BBC has verified it got here from Ecopetrol’s servers.
One database he has shared, dated January 2019, accommodates an inventory of 839 so-called “unresolved environmental impacts” throughout Colombia.
Ecopetrol makes use of this time period to ruthless subjects the place oil isn’t absolutely wiped clean up from terrain and H2O. The knowledge displays that, as of 2019, a few of these websites had remained polluted on this approach for over a decade.
Mr Olarte alleges that the company used to be seeking to conceal a few of them from Colombian government, pointing to a couple of 5th of the data labelled “only known to Ecopetrol”.
“You could see a category in the Excel where it lists which one is hidden from an authority and which one is not, which shows the process of hiding stuff from the government,” says Mr Olarte.
The BBC filmed at one of the most websites marked “only known to Ecopetrol”, which used to be dated 2017 within the database. Seven years upcoming, a thick, dim, oily-looking substance with plastic containment limitations round it used to be ocular alongside the threshold of a category of wetland.
Ecopetrol’s CEO from 2017 to 2023, Felipe Bayón, informed the BBC he strongly denied tips that there used to be any coverage to check details about air pollution.
“I say to you with complete confidence that there is not, and was not any policy nor any instruction saying, ‘these things can’t be shared’,” he stated.
Mr Bayón blamed sabotage for lots of oil spills.
Colombia has an extended historical past of armed struggle, and unlawful armed teams have centered oil amenities – however “theft” or “attack” are simplest discussed for six% of the instances indexed within the database.
He additionally stated he believed there were a “significant advance” since later in fixing issues that top to grease air pollution.
Alternatively, a distant all set of information displays Ecopetrol has persisted to pollute.
Figures received by way of the BBC from Colombia’s environmental regulator, the Autoridad Nacional de Licencias Ambientales (Anla), display Ecopetrol has reported loads of oil spills in keeping with month since 2020.
Requested in regards to the 2019 database of polluted websites, Ecopetrol admits it has data of 839 environmental incidents, however disputes that every one of them have been classed as “unresolved”.
The company says 95% of polluted websites which have been classed as unresolved since 2018 have now been wiped clean up.
It says all air pollution incidents are matter to a control procedure and are reported to the regulator.
The knowledge from the regulator contains loads of spills within the Barrancabermeja section the place Ms Velásquez and the fishers are living.
The fisherwoman and her colleagues had been tracking biodiversity within the section’s wetlands, which feed into the Magdalena River.
She stated there were a “massacre” of fauna. “This year, there were three dead manatees, five dead buffalo. We found more than 10 caimans. We found turtles, capybaras, birds, thousands of dead fish,” she stated terminating June.
It isn’t sunlit what brought about the deaths – the El Niño climate phenomenon and state trade is also components.
A 2022 find out about by way of the College of Nottingham lists air pollution – from oil manufacturing and alternative commercial and home resources – as one issue amongst a number of, together with state trade, which are degrading the Magdalena river basin.
Mr Olarte left Ecopetrol in 2019. He moved to his population house akin Barrancabermeja, and says he met with an used touch to invite about activity openings. Quickly afterwards, he says an nameless caller rang his telephone threatening to blast him.
“In the call I understood they thought I had put complaints against Ecopetrol, which was not the case,” he says.
Mr Olarte says extra ultimatum adopted, together with a observe that he confirmed to the BBC. He does now not know who made the ultimatum and there is not any proof that Ecopetrol ordered them.
Ms Velásquez and 7 alternative community additionally informed the BBC they’d gained demise ultimatum then difficult Ecopetrol.
She stated an armed team had fired ultimatum photographs at her space and spray-painted the word of honour “leave” at the wall.
The fisherwoman is now secure by way of armed bodyguards paid for by way of the federal government, however the ultimatum have persisted.
Requested in regards to the ultimatum Mr Olarte described, the previous CEO Mr Bayón stated they have been “absolutely unacceptable”.
“I want to make it totally clear… that never, at any time, was there any order of that sort,” Mr Bayón stated.
Ms Velásquez and Mr Olarte each know the hazards are actual. Colombia is essentially the most unhealthy nation on the planet for environmental defenders, in line with the NGO World Observer, with 79 killed in 2023.
Professionals say such killings are related to Colombia’s decades-long armed struggle, by which executive forces and paramilitaries allied to them have fought left-wing riot teams.
In spite of executive makes an attempt to finish the struggle, armed teams and drug cartels stay lively in portions of the rustic.
Matthew Smith, an oil analyst and monetary journalist founded in Colombia, says he does now not imagine Ecopetrol managers are all in favour of ultimatum by way of armed teams.
However he says there’s an “immense” overlap between former paramilitary teams and the non-public safety sector.
Non-public safety corporations frequently make use of former participants of paramilitary teams and compete for profitable agreements to give protection to oil amenities, he says.
Mr Olarte has shared inner Ecopetrol emails appearing that during 2018, the corporate paid a complete of $65m to greater than 2,800 non-public safety corporations.
“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 may doubtlessly even come with kidnapping or murdering public leaders or environmental defenders to deliver to “ensure that the Ecopetrol’s operations proceed smoothly”.
Mr Bayón stated he used to be “convinced that the checks and due diligence were done” in regards to the corporate’s relationships with non-public safety corporations.
Ecopetrol says it hasn’t ever had relationships with unlawful armed teams. It says it has a robust due diligence procedure and carries out human rights have an effect on exams for its actions.
The BBC contacted alternative participants of Ecopetrol’s former management from the week of Mr Olarte’s work, who strongly abandon the allegations on this record.
Now residing in Germany, Mr Olarte has been filing court cases about Ecopetrol’s environmental document to the Colombian government and the corporate itself – thus far, with out significant end result.
He has additionally been in a order of felony instances towards Ecopetrol and its control, matching to his work there, which might be as but unresolved.
“I did this in defence of my home, of my land, of my region, of my people,” he says.
Mr Bayón stressed out the industrial and social virtue of Ecopetrol to Colombia.
“We have 1.5 million families who don’t have access to energy or who cook with firewood and coal,” he stated. “I believe that we must continue to rely on clean production of oil, gas, all energy sources, to transition without ending an industry that is so important for Colombians.”
And Ms Velásquez residue progressive to proceed talking out, regardless of the ultimatum.
“If we don’t go fishing, we don’t eat,” she stated. “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.”
