Ecuadorian foreign minister quits over oil reserve issue

13-Jan-2010

Ecuadorian foreign minister Fander Falconi said he was resigning this week, likely because of criticism he's faced over his handling of a greenhouse gas mitigation plan.

As part of ongoing global climate change negotiations, Ecuador agreed not to extract 850 million barrels of oil in the Amazon rainforest. Keeping the oil underground would prevent 400 million tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted, Chinese news service Xinhua reported.

The oil reserves are worth an estimated $6 billion, though. Ecuador is hoping to secure $3 billion in payment from other nations in return for not tapping its oil resources.

But the country's president, Rafael Correa, called foreign nations' conditions "unacceptable." He added that negotiations were being handled "shamefully," a jab in Falconi's direction.

The Ecuadorian situation may be settled equivocally, even if Falconi isn't managing the process any longer. But Ecuador's struggles to mitigate climate change in concert with other nations are sure to be echoed in the future.

Newsweek reported last week that an agreement had been reached in Copenhagen to pay Brazil for slowing Amazonian deforestation. Reducing deforestation is a cost-effective way of dealing with carbon emissions, the magazine said: It quoted a McKinsey study which found that $1 spent on forest measures provides the same emissions reduction as $6 invested in renewable energy.

Breaking news brought to you by the Oxford Princeton Programme, specialists in energy courses. This and other related topics are part of the forthcoming course Fundamentals of Energy Futures on 13 April, 2010 in London.