Speaker draws comparisons between Ecuador, Pa.
Ecuador and Southwestern Pennsylvania are 2,800 miles apart. Daniel Bryan bridged the gap Monday evening.
An Ecuadorian educator, Bryan was the featured speaker at the latest installment of Washington & Jefferson College’s Energy Lecture Series. His topic was “A Balancing Act: Comparing Local Realities and Global Interests Between the Ecuadorian Rainforest and the Marcellus Shale Region.”
“The areas are very different, but you see similarities between the two,” Bryan told the audience at Dieter-Porter Hall, in a session that was postponed twice last month.
Very different, indeed. Ecuador is an emerging Third World nation in South America, not far from the equator, generally warm and lush with flora and fauna. Runoff from the rugged Andes Mountains creates the Amazon Rainforest, home to Yasuni National Park.
“It is likely the greatest concentration of biodiversity on Earth,” Bryan said of a park featuring 1,400 animal species, and thousands of species of plants, trees and insects.
There is quite a cultural diversity as well. “There are human populations there are in danger of extinction,” said Bryan, executive director of Pachaysana Institute and an instructor at the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito.
Marcellus, by contrast, is less varied but vibrant in its own right.
One of its most valuable resources, besides people, is a commonality it shares with Ecuador.
“Oil is the most important connection between the Ecuadorian Amazon and the rest of the world,” said Bryan, who is from oil country – Oklahoma.
This scenario should be familiar hereabouts. The Ecuadorian Amazon has an abundance of oil, which benefits that South American nation. Its government approved a plan to drill for it in Yasuni, a divisive decision among the populace. The financial potential is great, but at a possible ecological cost.
Sounds like a typical debate in Marcellus country, where natural gas and oil have their proponents and opponents.
“This is a basic conflict: economic need for resources versus sustaining local environment,” Bryan said. “Spills have been a problem of Ecuadorian oil companies, as well. Both areas want the benefits of oil, but what do you sacrifice? “
Accompanied by PowerPoint, he pointed out that oil was “the first massive industry to come into the Ecuadorian Amazon.” That led to road construction, which begot deforestation.
“Oil comes in and people cut down trees.”
Energy production sparks protests in Ecuador, similar to the way it does in Marcellus and other shale regions in the United States. It is another link, but Bryan said demonstrations in Ecuador are not as intense and are less frequent because the population is more dispersed, making travel difficult for many.
Well sites themselves are another similarity, one that is striking. Bryan displayed two photos of drilling areas, one each from Ecuador and Marcellus. The pads looked the same, and both were in isolated locales.
Bryan’s lecture and question-and-answer session lasted a combined 90 minutes. He speaks quickly, thoughtfully and humorously, and he had rapt attention the entire way. It was an entertaining, enlightening hour and a half.
There will be an “encore” tonight, when he will speak again at 7 in Room 100 at Dieter-Porter. As with all lectures in the series, it will be free.
This was the penultimate program in the Energy Series this academic year. The fifth and final session will be at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, when Jorge Pinon will present “Energy Trends in Latin America and the Caribbean” at Yost Auditorium in the Burnett Center. He will address energy development and consumption trends in those regions.
Pinon is director of the Latin America and Caribbean Program, Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, at the University of Texas.