Courtesy of Upstream Online, a look at Angola’s Sonangol Group’s interest in investing in Ecuador’s Amazon region.  As the report notes:

“…Angola’s oil minister and Opec president, Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos, will travel to Ecuador at the end of October to discuss Sonangol’s investment in Ecuador, Jaramillo said during a meeting with foreign journalists.

[The head of state-owned Petroecuador] Luis Jaramillo said that if there is an agreement with Sonangol, the company will assume the risks for exploration, and if there is oil to extract, Sonangol and Petroecuador will form a joint venture.

Petroecuador would have the majority of shares, Jaramillo said.

Minister of economic policy coordination Diego Borja told Dow Jones Newswires that Angola is interested in investing between $1.5 billion and $3 billion in different areas, included oil and energy.

“We are talking about the investments,” Borja said. “They are interested in several sectors, but the main interest is the oil sector.”

Jaramillo also said Petroecuador’s current exploitable reserves total 3.6 billion barrels, including the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini oil area that the government is trying not to develop in exchange for cash.

The Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oilfield is at Yasuni National Park.

The ITT has reserves of around 846 million barrels.

According the government’s proposal for ITT, the international community would pay Ecuador an annual fee equal to about half of the total cash it would generate from selling the crude.

In exchange for the contributions, the Ecuadorian state would make guarantees to maintain ITT field oil reserves underground indefinitely.”