Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa yesterday signed a decree to give the state almost all the extra oil revenues generated for foreign firms by high prices, sparking worries of more government control over the Andean country's key sector.
The decree raised the state share to 99 percent from 50 percent of "extraordinary revenues" produced by foreign oil companies above a set, contractual benchmark price.
The government expects to receive approximately US$700 million annually from the hike, which will affect the nation's largest investors -- Brazil's Petrobras and Spain's Repsol, as well as France's Perenco, China's Andes Petroleum and US-owned City Oriente .
PHOTO: AFP
The surprise announcement by left-winger Correa echoed measures introduced by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to increase state participation in his country's petroleum industry as part of his self-styled socialist revolution.
Ecuador's current law forces foreign oil companies to hand over at least 50 percent of their extra oil revenues. When that law was created last year, oil companies fretted over investments and some threatened to bring lawsuits.
Foreign oil "companies still make extraordinary profits, making the current contracts unfair for the Ecuadorian state," the presidential decree said.
The decree added that Correa, deemed it "necessary to regulate such profits more fairly and decided to change the law to reduce from 50 percent to 1 percent the oil windfall profits" for foreign oil companies.
Correa, a US-educated economist already spooking Wall Street with anti-free market rhetoric and talk of debt negotiation, said he wanted to renegotiate foreign oil contracts to raise the state share, but his government dismissed a Venezuela-style nationalization.
Oil Minister Galo Chiriboga said on Thursday night that the revenue hike was meant as leverage in the planned renegotiation with foreign oil firms.
"If they don't like their participation after the hike, we have to sit down and talk," Chiriboga said by telephone.
He added that he was confident foreign firms would not leave the country over the decree.
Chiriboga said the government would propose that foreign companies switch from current deals, which allow firms to have part of the oil they extract, to new contracts where the state will sell the crude itself and pay the companies a service fee to extract the product.
"This really took everybody by surprise and we don't have an official position at the moment," Federico Cruz, Repsol's spokesman in Ecuador, said of the decree.
A presidential legal counselor said the South America's No. 5 oil producer was ready to confront international and national arbitration over the increase.
"We are seeing Ecuador take a path similar to Venezuela," Roger Tissot, Latin American analyst with Washington-based consultancy PFC Energy. "The impact should not be a surprise; oil companies halting investment and we will continue to see a drop in production."
Private oil companies operating in Ecuador extract nearly half of the country's average daily output of around 530,000 barrels.
Ecuador has said Petrobras, Repsol, France's Perenco, China's Andes Petroleum and US-owned City Oriente have agreed to start renegotiation.
A Petrobras spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Correa earlier this week said the contract renegotiations were going to be amicable.
Analysts say Correa's party's convincing victory in Sunday's vote for an assembly to rewrite the Constitution could strengthen his mandate to forge ahead with pledges to increase the state's role in the economy and natural resources.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS