BBC Eye Investigations
Colombian energy enormous Ecopetrol has polluted hundreds of sites with oil, including water sources and biodiverse damset upds, the BBC World Service has establish.
Data leaked by a establisher includeee discneglects more than 800 write downs of these sites from 1989 to 2018, and recommends the company had flunked to tell about a fifth of them.
The BBC has also geted figures shoprosperg the company has spilled oil hundreds of times since then.
Ecopetrol says it complies brimmingy with Colombian law and has industry-directing rehearses on persistability.
The company’s main polishry is in Barrancabermeja, 260km (162 miles) north of the Colombian capital Bogota.
The huge cluster of processing set upts, industrial chimneys and storage tanks stretches for shut to 2km (1.2 miles) aextfinished the banks of Colombia’s extfinishedest river, the Magdalena – a water source for millions of people.
Members of the fishing community there suppose oil pollution is swaying savagelife in the river.
The wider area is home to finishangered river turtles, manatees and spider monkeys, and is part of a species-rich boilingspot in one of the world’s most biodiverse countries. Nearby damset upds include a protected habitat for jaguars.
When the BBC visited last June, families were fishing together in waterways criss-passed by oil pipelines.
One local said some of the fish they caught freed the pungent smell of cimpolite oil as they were cooked.
In places, a film with iridescent swirls could be seen on the surface of the water – a branch offentive signature of contamination by oil.
A fisherman dived down in the water and bcimpolitet up a clump of vegetation caked in unintelligent skinnye.
Pointing to it, Yuly Velásquez, pdwellnt of Fedepesan, a federation of fishing organisations in the region, said: “This is all grrelieve and misuse that comes honestly from the Ecopetrol polishry.”
Ecopetrol, which is 88% owned by the Colombian state and enumerateed on the New York Stock Exchange, refutes the fishers’ claims that it is polluting the water.
In response to the BBC’s inquires, it says it has effective misusewater treatment systems and effective contingency set ups for oil spills.
Andrés Olarte, the whistlebdecrease who has splitd the company’s data, says pollution by the firm dates back many years.
He unitecessitate Ecopetrol in 2017 and begined laboring as an recommendr to the CEO. He says he soon genuineised “someskinnyg was wrong”.
Mr Olarte says he contestd regulaters about what he portrays as “terrible” pollution data, but was rebuffed with reactions such as: “Why are you asking these inquires? You’re not getting what this job is about.”
He left the company in 2019, and splitd a huge amount of company data with US-based NGO the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and postponecessitater with the BBC. The BBC has verified it came from Ecopetrol’s servers.
One database he has splitd, dated January 2019, comprises a enumerate of 839 so-called “unrerepaird environmental impacts” apass Colombia.
Ecopetrol includes this term to unbenevolent areas where oil is not brimmingy spotlessed up from soil and water. The data shows that, as of 2019, some of these sites had remained polluted in this way for over a decade.
Mr Olarte alleges that the firm was trying to hide some of them from Colombian authorities, pointing to about a fifth of the write downs labelled “only understandn to Ecopetrol”.
“You could see a catebloody in the Excel where it enumerates which one is secret from an authority and which one is not, which shows the process of hiding stuff from the regulatement,” says Mr Olarte.
The BBC filmed at one of the sites labeled “only understandn to Ecopetrol”, which was dated 2017 in the database. Seven years postponecessitater, a dense, bdeficiency, oily-seeing substance with plastic comprisement barriers around it was apparent aextfinished the edge of a section of damset upd.
Ecopetrol’s CEO from 2017 to 2023, Felipe Bayón, tbetter the BBC he strongly denied presentions that there was any policy to withhbetter recommendation about pollution.
“I say to you with finish confidence that there is not, and was not any policy nor any teachion saying, ‘these skinnygs can’t be splitd’,” he said.
Mr Bayón accincluded subversion for many oil spills.
Colombia has a extfinished history of armed dispute, and illegitimate armed groups have centered oil facilities – but “theft” or “attack” are only alludeed for 6% of the cases enumerateed in the database.
He also said he supposed there had been a “transport inant progress” since then in solving problems that direct to oil pollution.
However, a split set of data shows Ecopetrol has persistd to pollute.
Figures geted by the BBC from Colombia’s environmental regulator, the Autoridad Nacional de Licencias Ambientales (Anla), show Ecopetrol has telled hundreds of oil spills per year since 2020.
Asked about the 2019 database of polluted sites, Ecopetrol acunderstandledges it has write downs of 839 environmental incidents, but disputes that all of them were classed as “unrerepaird”.
The firm says 95% of polluted sites that have been classed as unrerepaird since 2018 have now been spotlessed up.
It says all pollution incidents are subject to a regulatement process and are telled to the regulator.
The data from the regulator includes hundreds of spills in the Barrancabermeja area where Ms Velásquez and the fishers inhabit.
The fisherwoman and her colleagues have been seeing biodiversity in the area’s damset upds, which feed into the Magdalena River.
She said there had been a “massacre” of fauna. “This year, there were three dead manatees, five dead buffalo. We establish more than 10 caimans. We establish turtles, capybaras, birds, thousands of dead fish,” she said last June.
It is not evident what caincluded the deaths – the El Niño weather phenomenon and climate change may be factors.
A 2022 study by the University of Nottingham enumerates pollution – from oil production and other industrial and domestic sources – as one factor among cut offal, including climate change, that are humiliating the Magdalena river basin.
Mr Olarte left Ecopetrol in 2019. He shiftd to his family home proximate Barrancabermeja, and says he met with an better communicate to ask about job discneglectings. Soon afterwards, he says an anonymous caller rang his phone dangerening to end him.
“In the call I understood they thought I had put grumblets agetst Ecopetrol, which was not the case,” he says.
Mr Olarte says more dangers chaseed, including a notice that he showed to the BBC. He does not understand who made the dangers and there is no evidence that Ecopetrol ordered them.
Ms Velásquez and seven other people also tbetter the BBC they had acquired death dangers after challenging Ecopetrol.
She said an armed group had fired cautioning sboilings at her hoinclude and spray-colored the word “exit” on the wall.
The fisherwoman is now protected by armed bodydefends paid for by the regulatement, but the dangers have persistd.
Asked about the dangers Mr Olarte portrayd, the establisher CEO Mr Bayón said they were “absolutely unacconscious”.
“I want to originate it tohighy evident… that never, at any time, was there any order of that sort,” Mr Bayón said.
Ms Velásquez and Mr Olarte both understand the dangers are genuine. Colombia is the most hazardous country in the world for environmental deffinishers, according to the NGO Global Witness, with 79 ended in 2023.
Experts say such endings are joined to Colombia’s decades-extfinished armed dispute, in which regulatement forces and paramilitaries allied to them have fought left-prosperg resist groups.
Despite regulatement trys to finish the dispute, armed groups and drug cartels remain dynamic in parts of the country.
Matthew Smith, an oil analyst and financial journaenumerate based in Colombia, says he does not suppose Ecopetrol regulaters are take partd in dangers by armed groups.
But he says there is an “immense” overlap between establisher paramilitary groups and the personal security sector.
Private security firms frequently include establisher members of paramilitary groups and vie for lucrative confineeds to protect oil facilities, he says.
Mr Olarte has splitd inner Ecopetrol emails shoprosperg that in 2018, the company paid a total of $65m to more than 2,800 personal security companies.
“There is always that danger of some sort of contagion between the personal security companies, the types of people they include, and their desire to continupartner upgrasp their confineed,” Mr Smith says.
He says this could potentipartner even include seizeping or homicideing community directers or environmental deffinishers in order to “secure that the Ecopetrol’s operations persist daintyly”.
Mr Bayón said he was “swayd that the examines and due diligence were done” seeing the company’s relationships with personal security companies.
Ecopetrol says it has never had relationships with illegitimate armed groups. It says it has a strong due diligence process and carries out human rights impact appraisements for its activities.
The BBC communicateed other members of Ecopetrol’s establisher directership from the time of Mr Olarte’s includement, who strongly refute the allegations in this tell.
Now living in Germany, Mr Olarte has been surrfinisherting grumblets about Ecopetrol’s environmental write down to the Colombian authorities and the company itself – so far, without unbenevolentingful result.
He has also been in a series of legitimate cases agetst Ecopetrol and its regulatement, joind to his includement there, which are as yet unrerepaird.
“I did this in defence of my home, of my land, of my region, of my people,” he says.
Mr Bayón stressed the economic and social transport inance of Ecopetrol to Colombia.
“We have 1.5 million families who don’t have access to energy or who cook with firewood and coal,” he said. “I suppose that we must persist to depend on spotless production of oil, gas, all energy sources, to transition without finishing an industry that is so transport inant for Colombians.”
And Ms Velásquez remains choosed to persist speaking out, despite the dangers.
“If we don’t go fishing, we don’t eat,” she said. “If we speak and tell, we are ended… And if we don’t tell, we end ourselves, becainclude all these incidents of weighty pollution are ruining the environment around us.”
