“Ecuador races to move oil pipelines, protect power plant from raging river”, 01 July 2021

...Two dozen workers using six excavators cleared a strip of heavy forest in the foothills of Ecuador's Reventador volcano on an overcast June morning, rushing to carve a new route for an oil pipeline in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the country's worst oil spill in decades...Not far from the work site, electricity company Celec is investing $100 million in structures to prevent the river from reaching a reservoir for the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, which generates a third of the country's power. The SOTE pipeline, which carries around two-thirds of the production from oil fields deep in the Ecuadorean Amazon, has been under constant threat from violent erosion of the Coca River...The oil spill occurred last April after a landslide...Ecuador declared force majeure on crude exports, and Indigenous communities found it harder to fish and farm…[D]ozen people have been evacuated from their homes. Some of those who remain in the sparsely populated region are nervously watching the river's advance...Five earth scientists and geological engineers interviewed by Reuters warned the erosion could continue for years on an unpredictable path...Jorge Loor, Petroecuador's transport manager…[:]..."By getting up the mountain we are getting 400 meters away from the erosion, and probably for a fair amount of time we will not lose sleep over this problem"... In the nearby riverbank settlement of San Luis, a cliff separating 40 families' homes from the river has progressively receded, according residents and satellite images provided to Reuters by Planet Labs...