Ecuador to discuss oil contracts

  One of the main demands of the recent protests was that Ecuador should get a bigger share of oil profits. President Alfredo Palacio said that at the moment Ecuador receives about twenty percent of the profits, while eighty percent goes to oil companies. He said that in the interests of justice and equality this should change to give the country at least a fifty percent share.

The government also complains that because of the way the contracts work, the country has not benefited from record oil prices. President Palacio, in a televised interview, said that he'd already been in touch with the oil companies, who were prepared to renegotiate their contracts. Oil companies from eight different countries, including the United States, Spain, China and Brazil, operate in the Ecuadorean Amazon. The country is the fifth largest producer in Latin America.

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