Oil Development In Ecuador During 1923

THE Republic of Ecuador is situated partly in the northern and partly in the southern hemisphere. The equatorial line passes about 11 miles north of Quito, and. divides the country into two almost equal parts. Crossing the equator almost at right angles, and extending from Colombia into Peru, the Andes form a great upland that, in cross-section, resembles a truncated cone, the top of which is about 40 miles wide and about 10,000 ft. above the sea, while the base is about 80 miles wide extending from sea level, on the Pacific Coast, to the Amazon Plain, on the east. Superimposed on this upland are many active and extinct volcanoes, which form roughly two parallel chains of mountains, on the eastern and western boundaries, respectively, of the plateau. These are often referred to as the Eastern and Western Cordilleras of the Andes, although their parallelism is somewhat. questionable. The highest of these mountain, masses is Chimborazo, about 21,000 ft., above the sea; among the others is the volcanic peak, Cotopaxi, rising to about 18,000 ft. above the sea. The development of the petroleum resources of Ecuador is greatly affected by this Andean mass, not only .because of its composition and geological structure but because of the barrier it interposes between the lowlands on the Pacific side and whatever part of the Amazon Plain to the east is finally found to belong to Ecuador, for the eastern boundary of the Republic is still in dispute with Peru. To understand, therefore, the development of the petroleum reources of the Ecuador and the barriers to such development, we must bear in mind the three great physio-graphic divisions, viz., the Pacific Coastal region on the west, the Andean Plateau in the center, and the Amazon Plain on the east. The first important effect of the threefold physiographic division is that Ecuador has two sets of petroleum regulations: one for. that portion east of the Andes, and one for the Andean Plateau and the Pacific Coastal region although it is probable that the two sets of regulations are, in part, 'due to the boundary dispute with Peru.