Magnitude 6.3 earthquake strikes Ecuador, 20 injured

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QUITO (Reuters) – A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck near the coast of Ecuador on Friday, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said, injuring at least 20 people, damaging buildings in the city of Esmeraldas and temporarily shutting down some oil infrastructure.

The quake struck at a depth of 23 km (14.29 miles), EMSC said, with Ecuadorean authorities ruling out issuing a tsunami warning.

The government said in a report that 20 people were injured and around 135 families were affected by the earthquake. Several public buildings and private homes were damaged, and some areas also experienced power outages.

President Daniel Noboa, in a post on social media platform X, said the government would work to set up shelters, deliver humanitarian aid kits and “assist with everything our people need.”

The two pipelines operating in Ecuador, SOTE and OCP, resumed pumping crude oil after being temporarily suspended as a precautionary measure following the earthquake.

State-owned Petroecuador said there was no impact on exports.

The Esmeraldas Refinery, the country’s largest with a capacity of 110,000 barrels per day (bpd), still remains shut for inspection, Petroecuador said.

Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute, which estimated the quake’s magnitude at 6.0, also reported a second earthquake with a magnitude of 4.1 minutes later in the province of Guayas.

(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia in Quito and Rhea Rose Abraham in Bengaluru; Writing by Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Kylie Madry and Sandra Maler)