Whistleblower reveals Colombia oil big’s ‘terrible’ air pollution

Colombian power big Ecopetrol has polluted tons of of web sites with oil, together with water sources and biodiverse wetlands, the BBC World Service has discovered.

Information leaked by a former worker reveals greater than 800 data of those websites from 1989 to 2018, and signifies the corporate had didn’t report a couple of fifth of them.

The BBC has additionally obtained figures exhibiting the corporate has spilled oil tons of of occasions since then.

Ecopetrol says it complies absolutely with Colombian regulation and has industry-leading practices on sustainability.

The corporate’s most important refinery is in Barrancabermeja, 260km (162 miles) north of the Colombian capital Bogota.

The large cluster of processing vegetation, industrial chimneys and storage tanks stretches for near 2km (1.2 miles) alongside the banks of Colombia’s longest river, the Magdalena – a water supply for tens of millions of individuals.

Members of the fishing group there imagine oil air pollution is affecting wildlife within the river.

The broader space is residence to endangered river turtles, manatees and spider monkeys, and is a part of a species-rich hotspot in one of many world’s most biodiverse nations. Close by wetlands embody a protected habitat for jaguars.

When the BBC visited final June, households had been fishing collectively in waterways criss-crossed by oil pipelines.

One native stated a few of the fish they caught launched the pungent odor of crude oil as they had been cooked.

In locations, a movie with iridescent swirls could possibly be seen on the floor of the water – a particular signature of contamination by oil.

A fisherman dived down within the water and introduced up a clump of vegetation caked in darkish slime.

Pointing to it, Yuly Velásquez, president of Fedepesan, a federation of fishing organisations within the area, stated: “That is all grease and waste that comes straight from the Ecopetrol refinery.”

Ecopetrol, which is 88% owned by the Colombian state and listed on the New York Inventory Trade, rejects the fishers’ claims that it’s polluting the water.

In response to 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 information, says air pollution by the agency dates again a few years.

He joined Ecopetrol in 2017 and began working as an adviser to the CEO. He says he quickly realised “one thing was incorrect”.

Mr Olarte says he challenged managers about what he describes as “terrible” air pollution information, however was rebuffed with reactions comparable to: “Why are you asking these questions? You are not getting what this job is about.”

He left the corporate in 2019, and shared a considerable amount of firm information with US-based NGO the Environmental Investigation Company (EIA) and later with the BBC. The BBC has verified it got here from Ecopetrol’s servers.

One database he has shared, dated January 2019, comprises an inventory of 839 so-called “unresolved environmental impacts” throughout Colombia.

Ecopetrol makes use of this time period to imply areas the place oil is just not absolutely cleaned up from soil and water. The info exhibits that, as of 2019, a few of these websites had remained polluted on this manner for over a decade.

Mr Olarte alleges that the agency was attempting to cover a few of them from Colombian authorities, pointing to a couple of fifth of the data labelled “solely recognized to Ecopetrol”.

“You possibly can see a class within the Excel the place it lists which one is hidden from an authority and which one is just not, which exhibits the method of hiding stuff from the federal government,” says Mr Olarte.

The BBC filmed at one of many websites marked “solely recognized to Ecopetrol”, which was dated 2017 within the database. Seven years later, a thick, black, oily-looking substance with plastic containment obstacles round it was seen alongside the sting of a bit of wetland.

Ecopetrol’s CEO from 2017 to 2023, Felipe Bayón, informed the BBC he strongly denied strategies that there was any coverage to withhold details about air pollution.

“I say to you with full confidence that there’s not, and was not any coverage nor any instruction saying, ‘this stuff cannot be shared’,” he stated.

Mr Bayón blamed sabotage for a lot of oil spills.

Colombia has an extended historical past of armed battle, and unlawful armed teams have focused oil amenities – however “theft” or “assault” are solely talked about for six% of the instances listed within the database.

He additionally stated he believed there had been a “important advance” since then in fixing issues that result in oil air pollution.

Nonetheless, a separate set of information exhibits Ecopetrol has continued to pollute.

Figures obtained by the BBC from Colombia’s environmental regulator, the Autoridad Nacional de Licencias Ambientales (Anla), present Ecopetrol has reported tons of of oil spills per yr since 2020.

Requested in regards to the 2019 database of polluted websites, Ecopetrol admits it has data of 839 environmental incidents, however disputes that each one of them had been classed as “unresolved”.

The agency says 95% of polluted websites which were classed as unresolved since 2018 have now been cleaned up.

It says all air pollution incidents are topic to a administration course of and are reported to the regulator.

The info from the regulator consists of tons of of spills within the Barrancabermeja space the place Ms Velásquez and the fishers stay.

The fisherwoman and her colleagues have been monitoring biodiversity within the space’s wetlands, which feed into the Magdalena River.

She stated there had been a “bloodbath” of fauna. “This yr, there have been three lifeless manatees, 5 lifeless buffalo. We discovered greater than 10 caimans. We discovered turtles, capybaras, birds, hundreds of lifeless fish,” she stated final June.

It’s not clear what precipitated the deaths – the El Niño climate phenomenon and local weather change could also be components.

A 2022 research by the College of Nottingham lists air pollution – from oil manufacturing and different industrial and home sources – as one issue amongst a number of, together with local weather change, which might be degrading the Magdalena river basin.

Mr Olarte left Ecopetrol in 2019. He moved to his household residence close to Barrancabermeja, and says he met with an outdated contact to ask about job openings. Quickly afterwards, he says an nameless caller rang his cellphone threatening to kill him.

“Within the name I understood they thought I had put complaints towards Ecopetrol, which was not the case,” he says.

Mr Olarte says extra threats adopted, together with a notice that he confirmed to the BBC. He doesn’t know who made the threats and there’s no proof that Ecopetrol ordered them.

Ms Velásquez and 7 different folks additionally informed the BBC that they had obtained loss of life threats after difficult Ecopetrol.

She stated an armed group had fired warning pictures at her home and spray-painted the phrase “go away” on the wall.

The fisherwoman is now protected by armed bodyguards paid for by the federal government, however the threats have continued.

Requested in regards to the threats Mr Olarte described, the previous CEO Mr Bayón stated they had been “completely unacceptable”.

“I wish to make it completely clear… that by no means, at any time, was there any order of that kind,” Mr Bayón stated.

Ms Velásquez and Mr Olarte each know the dangers are actual. Colombia is probably the most harmful nation on this planet for environmental defenders, in response to the NGO World Witness, with 79 killed in 2023.

Consultants say such killings are linked to Colombia’s decades-long armed battle, wherein authorities forces and paramilitaries allied to them have fought left-wing insurgent teams.

Regardless of authorities makes an attempt to finish the battle, armed teams and drug cartels stay lively in components of the nation.

Matthew Smith, an oil analyst and monetary journalist based mostly in Colombia, says he doesn’t imagine Ecopetrol managers are concerned in threats by armed teams.

However he says there may be an “immense” overlap between former paramilitary teams and the personal safety sector.

Personal safety companies usually make use of former members of paramilitary teams and compete for profitable contracts to guard oil amenities, he says.

Mr Olarte has shared inside Ecopetrol emails exhibiting that in 2018, the corporate paid a complete of $65m to greater than 2,800 personal safety firms.

“There may be at all times that threat of some form of contagion between the personal safety firms, the varieties of folks they make use of, and their want to repeatedly keep their contract,” Mr Smith says.

He says this might doubtlessly even embody kidnapping or murdering group leaders or environmental defenders with the intention to “be certain that the Ecopetrol’s operations proceed easily”.

Mr Bayón stated he was “satisfied that the checks and due diligence had been achieved” relating to the corporate’s relationships with personal safety firms.

Ecopetrol says it has by no means had relationships with unlawful armed teams. It says it has a powerful due diligence course of and carries out human rights impression assessments for its actions.

The BBC contacted different members of Ecopetrol’s former management from the time of Mr Olarte’s employment, who strongly deny the allegations on this report.

Now residing in Germany, Mr Olarte has been submitting complaints about Ecopetrol’s environmental file to the Colombian authorities and the corporate itself – thus far, with out significant end result.

He has additionally been in a sequence of authorized instances towards Ecopetrol and its administration, associated to his employment there, that are as but unresolved.

“I did this in defence of my residence, of my land, of my area, of my folks,” he says.

Mr Bayón burdened the financial and social significance of Ecopetrol to Colombia.

“We now have 1.5 million households who do not have entry to power or who cook dinner with firewood and coal,” he stated. “I imagine that we should proceed to depend on clear manufacturing of oil, fuel, all power sources, to transition with out ending an {industry} that’s so vital for Colombians.”

And Ms Velásquez stays decided to proceed talking out, regardless of the threats.

“If we do not go fishing, we do not eat,” she stated. “If we communicate and report, we’re killed… And if we do not report, we kill ourselves, as a result of all these incidents of heavy air pollution are destroying the atmosphere round us.”