Indigenous community from Eucador’s Amazon filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Chinese oil company PetroOriental, accusing it of contaminating their ancestral land by burning off natural gas from oil wells.
Leaders of the Waorani village filed a lawsuit in a court in Francisco de Orellena.
The community is objecting to the process of gas flaring where oil producers burn off millions of cubic metres of natural gas produced from oil wells. The community says that the process is contaminating their land and water sources.
“[The oil companies] say that we want oil. But we don’t want that. What we want is them to pay for the flaring,” Juana Mintare, a Waorani woman told AFP.
“We have seen our way of life altered forever,” the community stated in the complaint. “Our very survival is threatened as a result of climate change. Our grandparents said that we used to live well but now we are suffering from having been civilized,” said the Community leader.
Gas flaring is a major environment concern as it generates a lot of greenhouse gases which contribute to global warming.
