ECUADOR TO USE COLOMBIA OIL LINK FOR FIVE YEARS Ecuador will use a new pipeline link with Colombia to export crude oil for the next five years, Colombian mines and energy minister Guillermo Perry said. The link will be inaugurated on May 8. It was built to allow Ecuador to resume exports of crude oil halted on March 5 by earthquake damage to its Lago Agrio to Balao pipeline, Once that pipeline is repaired, Ecuador will exceed its OPEC quota in order to offset lost income and pay debts contracted with Venezuela and Nigeria since the quake, Ecuador mines and energy minister Javier Espinosa said. The two ministers were speaking at a news conference after signing an agreement for joint oil exploration and exploitation of the jungle border zone between the two nations. Drilling will begin in September. "The agreement to transport Ecuadorean crude oil is not only for this emergency period but for the next five years, with possibility of an extension. Between 20,000 and 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) will be pumped along it," Perry said. Espinosa said Ecuador planned to pump 35 mln barrels through the link in the next five years, at a cost of 75 cents per barrel during the first year. The 43-km link, with a maximum capacity of 50,000 bpd, will run from Lago Agrio, the centre of of Ecuador's jungle oilfields, to an existing Colombian pipeline that runs to the Pacific port of Tumaco. Espinosa said the 32-km stretch of the link built on the Ecuadorean side cost 10.5 mln dlrs. Perry gave no figures for Colombia's 11 km segment but said it was "insignificant compared with what we are going to earn." OPEC member Ecuador was pumping around 250,000 bpd before the quake. Lost exports of 185,000 bpd are costing it 90 mln dlrs per month, Espinosa said.