A consortium of international oil companies signed a contract with the Ecuadorean government on Thursday to build the biggest infrastructure project in the country's history.
The landmark $1.1bn deal to construct a 312-mile oil pipeline, stretching from oil fields in the Ecuadorean Amazon across the Andes mountains to the Pacific port of Balao, will more than double crude transport capacity in the country.
The OCP consortium of Agip of Italy, Canada's Alberta Energy, Kerr-McGee and Occidental Petroleum of the US, Spanish-Argentine giant Repsol-YPF and Argentina's Techint, will take two years to connect the fields with the Pacific coast.
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Ecuador signs oil pipeline deal
