Balao

Oil port, northwestern Ecuador, on the Pacific Ocean, adjacent to Esmeraldas city. Its development is entirely due to its choice as the terminus for the Trans-Ecuadorian Pipeline, built 1970–72 to exploit the rich petroleum deposits of Ecuador's Napo province, in El Oriente region, the tropical rainforest of the headwaters of the Amazon east of the Andes. Balao's terminal, opened