OCP (Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados)) is a consortium of international oil companies.
At the beginning of 2001 the construction of a 500 km long oil pipeline was resolved and approved from the coast of the Pacific Ocean to the Amazonas low ground to the Lago Agrio oil town. In future, approximately 450,000 barrels of oil are to be transported from the primeval forest to the Esmeraldas coastal town every day.
The main credit provider of the project is the Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB), which has invested about $ 900 million to the project at the top of a bank consortium.

Environmentalists and people living in the neighbourhood of the new pipeline have been staging vigorous protests from the beginning of the project. In their opinion, there have been major omissions in the project planning as the WestLB considers - according to its own statements - the environmental and social standards of the World Bank a necessary precondition for any financial involvement.

According to these standards, an independent environmental impact assessment (EIA) should precede the implementation of the construction plans, evaluating the impacts on the environment and people in the region. However, it was too late when the relevant parties commissioned this assessment.
Opponents of the project have not accepted subsequent assessments by the American companies Entrix and Stone&Webster because of their insufficient impartiality. "The oil industry is one of the most important clients of Stone&Webster," said Sandra Pfotenhauer, a Greenpeace expert, quoted in an August issue of the TAZ daily.
Investigation missions of various NGOs as well as journalists in the course of the year have come to quite different results than the WestLB.
The World Bank articulated major concerns about the environmental impacts of the planned pipeline, asking the OCP to refrain from stating that the World Bank standards were observed.

Because of these major discrepancies, a grouping of German, Italian and American NGOs and trade associations commissioned Dr. Robert Goodland, an environment expert, to carry out an independent assessment of the situation in Ecuador. The report, which has been released very recently, documents violations of the World Bank standards and uncovers illegal methods in the pipeline construction.

The Goodland report has been a tremendous success for people in Ecuador as well as the environmentalists.
 
The regional government of Nordrhein-Westfalen, with its 43 per cent the largest share holder of the WestLB, wants to decide until 30 September whether it will continue backing the credit of Westdeutsche Landesbank for the destruction of the rain forest in Ecuador.