Threats from Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon - Recent Advances and Issues in Environmental Science - page 152

part of Yasuní. It protects a portion of the territory of the Tagaeri and Taromenane, the
country's two known indigenous groups in voluntary isolation. To the southwest of
Yasuní, intense opposition [38] from indigenous peoples has stopped exploration in
two leased blocks (Blocks 23 and 24) for over 7 years. Just to the east of these two
blocks, the entire southeastern part of the Ecuadorian Amazon has been zoned into
blocks, but not yet offered to multinational oil companies. Newer oil operations from
the 1990s and this decade (Blocks 15, 16, and 31) have built new access roads into
the primary forests of the Yasuní region. At the time of writing, Ecuador's Constituent
Assembly just completed a new Constitution prohibiting extraction in protected areas
except by Presidential petition in the name of national interest.
Figure 5. Focus on Ecuador. Oil and gas blocks in Ecuador, including all IUCN categorized
Amazonian protected areas and key features discussed in the text. Oil blocks discussed in the text
are numbered.