Atlas of Contaminated Sites

Notable case, Nueva Loja (Lago Agrio), Sucumbíos, Ecuador

Lago Agrio oil field

An oil field in the Ecuadorian Amazon run by Texaco from 1972 to 1990: billions of gallons of produced water discharged into streams and hundreds of unlined waste pits, in the lands of the Cofán and Siona-Secoya peoples.

Microbial bioremediation

Status
Not addressed
Activity
since 1972
Media
soil, surface water, groundwater, air
Kind of site
oil

Contaminants

Organic compounds

Other inorganics

Status

Not addressed

Texaco cleaned up 161 pits between 1995 and 1998; the work, certified complete in 1998, was later disputed on the grounds that waste was buried rather than treated. The Ecuadorian judgment has not been enforced. The present state of the pits has not been checked.

Story

Texaco began exploring in 1964, found oil in 1966–67 and started production in 1972. Management passed to Petroecuador in 1990 and the concession expired in 1992. Over that period about 19.3 billion gallons of produced water carrying 500–5,000 ppm of hydrocarbons were discharged, waste was left in 880 unlined pits and 85–88% of the gas was flared. Pipeline spills are put at 16.8 million gallons of crude.

Between 1972 and 1992 about 350,000 settlers moved onto traditionally indigenous land. In 2011 an Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron, which had acquired Texaco, to pay $18 billion, later cut to $9.5 billion; in 2014 a US judge ruled that the judgment had been obtained by corrupt means, and in 2018 the Permanent Court of Arbitration reached the same conclusion.

Timeline

  1. 1967Oil discovered.
  2. 1972Production begins.
  3. 1990Management passes to Petroecuador.
  4. 1995Texaco starts cleaning up 161 pits (to 1998, $40 million).
  5. 2011Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron.
  6. 2018The Permanent Court of Arbitration finds the judgment was obtained by fraud.

Health

According to Wikipedia five peer-reviewed studies indicated an increased cancer risk in the area, while a Chevron-funded study contradicted this. Estimates of the excess vary widely.

Remediation

  1. 1995pit closureCleanup of 161 waste pits by Texaco (1995–1998), later disputed.

Plants and fungi at this site

Microbial bioremediationField pilot

Community-led bioremediation by introducing microbes into contaminated soil, limited in scope according to Wikipedia. Mycoremediation trials by the Amazon Mycorenewal Project (now CoRenewal) are often mentioned for this region: no data, sites or reports describing them were found on the organisation's website when consulted in 2026, so they are not documented here.

From the literature

Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.

Plants

Fungi

The rest are on the contaminant pages.

Sources

  1. Lago Agrio oil field, Wikipedia, 2026

Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.