LatinNews Daily - 6 March 2025

*Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa has released a statement saying that a controversial deal to award operating rights at the highly productive Sacha oilfield in Orellana province is still being negotiated and will not go ahead unless the government receives a payment of US$1.5bn by 11 March from Sinopetrol – a consortium of Petrolia Ecuador and Amodaimi Oil Company, subsidiaries of Canada’s New Stratus Energy and China’s Sinopec respectively. Noboa said that if the payment is not made before this deadline, “we will analyse other options”. The government has faced heavy criticism over the deal with Sinopetrol, with the national assembly saying that it has been negotiated without adequate scrutiny. Noboa is facing the possibility of indigenous protests after Leonidas Iza, the president of the umbrella indigenous organisation Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Conaie), yesterday pledged “to defend” Sacha from what critics argue amounts to a privatisation.  However, Energy and Mining Minister Inés Manzano has insisted that Sacha needs private capital after decades of underinvestment from state oil company Petroecuador.