A Crude Awakening
- 18 Jan 08, 04:56 PM
Posted from:San Lorenzo
Yesterday we drove to a small group of houses next to a small river and spent the night in a temporary medical shelter. The sleeping options were pretty limited. There were a couple of medical trolleys and two small beds. I think that I am lucky to get one of the beds until I lay on it later that night and it stinks of pee.
Bruce travels to the oil spill
We set off early this morning in a traditional small canoe boat with outboard engine and filmed Bruce chatting to the community environmental officer who will be our guide. It rains heavily on the way and after an hour or so the guide points us to pull into the bank.
From here on it鈥檚 by foot and he leads us into the jungle. It鈥檚 very humid and carrying the heavy camera kit is pretty tough. We film a nice sequence tracking back in front of Bruce as he describes where we are going while pushing through the jungle. Wearing a t-shirt I quickly have stings all up my arms as well as razor grass cuts and put on a long-sleeved top, which alleviated one problem but I am soon drenched with sweat from the heat.
Bruce on the boat with Guevara
As we walk further we start to hear a rumbling noise which gets louder and louder. Eventually we emerge from under the jungle canopy and into the blinding light. We are in a large clearing the size of a football pitch with an un-manned oil well pumping at full pelt. It doesn鈥檛 look like a classic design as imagined - with a nodding head as seen in the movies - but is rather a large box type structure with generators and a giant exhaust belting out fumes. The sound is deafening.
We film a reaction with Bruce and take some shots but this is not the location of the spill so we leave and follow a mud road for about an hour. We walk around a corner to find a much larger, manned well and as we approach closer the heavens open up with a tropical storm. The workers seem oblivious to who we are and even wave back as we approach. The environmental monitor leads us around the back of the well and down a steep muddy slope where we film a large area still contaminated by crude oil.
Bruce witnesses the effects of the spill near Jose Oliya
To be honest the oil workers had done a fairly good job in cleaning the spill-up and it was still a work in progress but who knows how much crude oil had been washed into the river when it first happened. The earlier pictures we鈥檇 seen of the spill when it had first occurred were shocking and appalling. All of us were now totally drenched but the rain really suited the scene so we carried on filming Bruce as he witnessed some of the impact that the oil industry can have on this environment.
We鈥檝e also found out that as well as oil pollution, the rivers can suffer terribly from being polluted by contaminated wastewater, pumped directly out of the wells and into the rivers. This then causes long-term ecosystem damage as well as affecting local villagers, who are not able to bathe in the river or catch fish.
An oil spill near Jose Oliya
After a while a group of the oil workers turn up each holding a rather large machete in his hand. They are all very smiley and shake each of our hands but it is obvious we are no longer welcome so we make a swift exit.
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