Ecuador has restarted crude oil exports after massive protests caused the country’s oil industry to more or less grind to a halt. “All exports that were suspended will be rescheduled in the coming days to comply with all the obligations that the company maintains,” Reuters cited Ecuador’s state energy company Petroecuador as saying in a statement. The protests were ignited by a set of austerity measures the Ecuadorean government wanted to implement as part of efforts to reduce its fiscal deficit. They were a condition for the Andean country to get a $2.4-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. However, the measures included the removal of fuel subsidies that led to a 120-percent spike in prices at the pump. This sparked the anger of indigenous groups and farmers who led the protests that began on October 3. The scale of the protests forced state oil companies to shut down […]