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Unlike BP's Gulf spill that was the result of a single cataclysmic event, Texaco's oil extraction system in Ecuador was designed, built, and operated on the cheap using substandard technology from the outset. This led to systematic pollution from multiple sources on a daily basis for almost three decades.

"The Chinese government is courting disaster with this round," said Adam Zuckerman of environmental and human rights organization Amazon Watch. "These blocks are the most controversial in Ecuador and there's already a list of companies who have tried to drill there and have failed. Drilling in some of the most pristine regions of the Amazon would not only violate the rights of local communities, it would break China's own laws."

The battle for oil in the Amazon has often been overlooked recently due to the fight to keep oil companies out of the Arctic. But the threat remains and is set to get much worse

It is over twenty years since Judith Kimerling’s ground-breaking booklet Amazon Crude was published into the devastation of oil in Ecuador by Texaco. If you have never read Joe Kane’s stunning book Savages on the shocking cultural impact of Amazonian oil, you should add it to your reading list.

The latest warning about oil’s lethal legacy has come from neighbouring Peru.  On Monday, the country’s government declared an environmental state of emergency in a remote region of the rainforest near the Ecuadorian border, inhabited by the Quichua and Ashuar indigenous groups