  |
Ecuador plans trusteeship for Occidental oil revenues
AFP
QUITO
Petroleumworld.com 08 11 06
The Ecuadoran government has asked Congress to create a trusteeship for revenues from oil extracted by US company Occidental Petroleum Corporation, which in May lost its contract to operate in the country after violating the law, an official said Thursday.
Economy Minister Armando Rodas explained that the trusteeship would be administered by the central bank and the revenues would be exclusively used to finance hydroelectric and hydrocarbon projects.
The plan was proposed Wednesday as part of draft legislation that would create the Educadoran Investment Fund in the Energy and Hydrocarbon Sectors in the single-chamber legislature, which has 30 days to vote on it.
"With the trusteeship the revenues from oil extracted by Oxy (Occidental) will be independent from the revenues of Petroecuador", the state oil company, Rodas said.
The economy minister added that the mechanism would allow the state to finance urgently needed projects for the country, which "hasn't had a major project with crude revenues in the past 30 years."
A week ago Ecuador sold 17.2 million barrels of crude Occidental had extracted from the Amazon basin region to companies in the United States, Japan and Switzerland.
Ecuador, which has South America's fifth-largest oil reserves, canceled Occidental's joint venture with Petroecuador in May, alleging the California-based company had illegally sold a share of its Ecuador operations in 2004.
The cancellation came in the context of moves by the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia to wrest control of energy resources from foreign companies.
AFP 10 1658 GMT 08 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
Your
feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.
Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
Any
question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com
Best
Viewed with IE
5.01+
Windows
NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels