Alberto Acosta
In Ecuador, striking it rich by keeping oil in the ground
Iin the 1970s and ‘80s, the oil company Texaco dumped billions of gallons of waste from its operations in the Ecuadoran Amazon into the forest. While the pollution remains the subject of a long-running lawsuit, the Ecuadoran government seems to be taking a lesson from the disaster. It says it may put several major Amazon oil deposits off limits to drilling if other countries help cover at least some of the lost revenue, in a deal that would also protect one of the richest ecosystems on Earth.