BBC eye investigation
Colombian energy giant Ecopetrol has polluted hundreds of oil seats, including water sources and wetlands of biological, BBC World Service revealed.
The data that the former employee leaked reveals more than 800 records of these web locations from 1989 to 2018, indicating that the company failed to report on the fifth of them.
The BBC also received figures showing that the company has since shed oil from hundreds of hundreds.
Ecopetrol says he fully agrees with the Colombian law and has leading practices from sustainability.
The main refinery of the company is located in Barrancabermeja, 260 km (162 miles) north of the Colombian capital Bogota.
A huge set of processing facilities, industrial chimneys and tank extends close to 2 km (1.2 miles) along the coasts of the longest river Colombia, Magdalene – a source of water for millions of people.
Members of the fishing community there believe that oil pollution affects the wild animals in Rijeka.
The wider area is the home of endangered river turtles, manate and spider monkeys, and is part of the foci of a rich species in one of the world’s most important biological countries. Near the wetland areas include a protected habitat for Jaguars.
When the BBC visited last June, the families were fishing together in water paths crossed by oil pipelines.
One local said that some of the fish they caught released the pungent scent of raw oil while they were cooked.
In places on the surface of the water, a movie with an iridaceous swirl – a characteristic signature of oil contamination could be seen.
The fisherman dived in the water and raised a pile of vegetation in the form of dark mucus.
Pointing to this, Yuly Velásquez, president of Fedepesan, Federation of Fish Organizations in the region, said: “This is all ointment and waste that comes directly from Ekopetrol’s refinery.”
Ecopetrol, which is 88% owned by the Colombian State and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, rejects fishing claims to pollute water.
In response to BBC questions, he says he has effective wastewater treatment systems and effective oil pouring plans.
Andrés Olarte, a whistleblower who shared the company’s data, says pollution is from the company from day to many years.
He joined Ecopetron in 2017 and started working as an adviser to the executive director. He says he soon realized “something is wrong.”
Mr. Olarte says he challenged managers about what he describes as “awful” pollution information, but he was rejected by reactions such as: “Why are you asking these questions? Don’t get what this is about this business.”
He left the company in 2019 and shared a large amount of data on a company with the US NGO organization of the Environmental Research Agency (EIA) and later IS BBC. The BBC confirmed that he came from Ecopetrol’s servers.
One database he shared, since January 2019, it contains a list of 839 so -called “unresolved environmental impacts” throughout Colombia.
Ecopetrol uses this term for the meaning of the area where the oil is not completely cleaned from the ground and water. Data show that since 2019, some of these places have remained polluted for more than a decade.
Mr. Olarte claims that the company tried to hide some of them from the Colombian authorities, pointing to approximately a fifth of records with “only Ecopetrol”.
“In Excel, you could see the category in which the allegation that is hidden from the authority, which is not, which shows the process of hiding things from the Government,” says Mr. Ollarte.
The BBC was shot at one of the web locations marked “known only ecopetrol”, which is dated in 2017 at the database. Seven years later, a thick, black, oily substance with plastic retention barriers was visible along the edge of a part of the wetlands.
The Ecopetrola CEO from 2017 to 2023, Felipe Bayón, told the BBC that he had strongly denied the proposals that there was any policy to distract the pollution information.
“I tell you with complete confidence that there is no and there was no policy or any instructions that say,” Things cannot be divided, “he said.
Mr. Bayón blamed his sabotage for many oil pouring.
Colombia has a long history of armed conflicts, and illegal armed groups target oil plants – but “theft” or “attack” are mentioned only for 6% of cases listed in the database.
He also said that he believed that there had been a “significant progress” in solving problems that lead to oil pollution.
However, a separate set of data shows that Ekopetrol was still polluting.
The figures obtained by the BBC from the Colombian Environmental Protection Regulator, Authoridad Nacional de Liccias Ambientales (ANLA) show that Ecopetrol has reported hundreds of oil pouring a year since 2020.
Asked about the database of polluted places for 2019, Ecopetrol admits that there are records of 839 environmental incidents, but disputes that everyone was classified as “unresolved”.
The company says 95% of polluted places that have been classified as unresolved since 2018 was cleared.
He says all pollution incidents are subject to the management process and are reported to the regulator.
Data from the regulator include hundreds of pouring in the Barankabermeni area where Mrs. Velásquez and Fishers live.
Fisherwoman and her colleagues monitored biodiversity in the wetlands that feed on the Magdalen River.
She said there was a “massacre” of Faune. “This year, there were three dead Manate, five dead buffalo. We found more than 10 Kaiman. We found turtles, capital, birds, thousands of dead fish,” she said last June.
It is not clear what caused death – the weather phenomenon el niño and climate change can be factors.
Study 2022, University of Nottingham cites pollution – from the production of oil and other industrial and domestic sources – as one factor among several, including climate change, degrading the Magdalen River.
Mr. Olarte left Ecopetrol in 2019. He moved to a family home near Barrancaberameje and says he met with old contact to ask himself about open jobs. Shortly thereafter, he says that an anonymous caller rang his phone threatening to kill him.
“In the call, I realized that he thought I had invested complaints about Ecopetrol, which was not the case,” he says.
Mr. Olarte says that more threats followed, including a note shown by the BBC. He does not know who has done threats and there is no evidence that they were ordered by Ecopetrol.
Mrs. Velásquez and seven other people also said the BBC that they had received death threats after provoking Ecopetrol.
She said the armed group fired a warning into her house and painted the word “left” on the wall.
Fisherwoman is now protected by armed bodyguards paid by the Government, but threats continued.
Asked about the threats described by Mr. Olarte, former executive director Mr. Bayón said they were “absolutely unacceptable.”
“I want it quite clearly … never, at any time, there was no such order,” Mr. Bayón said.
Mrs. Velásquez and Mr. Olarte know that the risks are real. Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for environmental veterans, according to NGO Global Wieck, with 79 killed in 2023.
Experts say such killings are associated with Colombian decades by armed conflict, in which government forces and paramilitary groups have been related to the leftist rebel groups.
Despite the attempts of the Government to end the conflict, armed groups and drug cartels remain active in parts of the country.
Matthew Smith, an oil analyst and a financial journalist based in Colombia, says he does not believe that ecopetrol managers are involved in the threats of armed groups.
But he says there is an “immense” overlap between former paramilitary groups and a private security sector.
Private security companies often employ former paramilitary groups and compete for lucrative contracts to protect oil institutions, he says.
Mr. Olarte shared internal e -Mail Ecopetrol showing that in 2018 the company paid a total of $ 65 million for more than 2,800 private security companies.
“There is always this risk of some kind of infection between private security companies, a kind of people that hire and their desires to continuously maintain their contract,” says Mr. Smith.
He says this could potentially include even the abduction or murder of the community leaders or environmental veterans to “ensure that Ekopetrol’s business continues smoothly”.
Mr. Bayón said he was “convinced that checks and deep attention was done” in connection with the company relations with companies with private security companies.
Ecopetrol says he never had relationships with illegal armed groups. He says he has a strong duty procedure and conducts an assessment of influence on human rights for his activities.
The BBC contacted other members of the former Ecopetrol leadership of Mr. Olarte’s employment time, who strongly deny the allegations in this report.
He now lives in Germany, Mr. Olarte submits complaints to Ecopetrol – the environmental record of Colombian authorities and the company itself – so far, without a meaningful result.
He was also in a series of legal cases against Ecopetrol of his management, which relate to his employment, which are still unresolved.
“I did this in defense of my home, my country, my region, my people,” he says.
Mr. Bayón emphasized the economic and social importance of Ecopetrol in Colombia.
“We have 1.5 million families who do not have access to energy or cooking with firewood and coal wood,” he said. “I believe we have to continue to rely on pure oil production, gas, all energy sources, to a transition without ending an industry that is so important for the Colombians.”
And Mrs. Velásquez remains determined to continue talking, despite threats.
“If we don’t go fishing, we don’t eat,” she said. “If we talk and report, we are killed … and if we don’t sign up, we kill ourselves, because all these heavy pollution incidents destroy the environment around us.”
