Ecuador muddling on

The South American producer needs an overhaul to spur new oil growth. Its new president isn't likely to deliver

Ecuador, Opec's smallest producer until Equatorial Guinea recently joined the group, has a new president sitting atop its troubled oil industry. Lenín Moreno, the leftist successor to Rafael Correa, won a narrow victory over his opponent, the conservative former banker Guillermo Lasso, and took office in May. While much of the rest of the region has rejected the rise of the "pink tide", a crop of left-leaning populists in the mould of Hugo Chavez, Ecuador's voters chose continuity. That bodes ill for Ecuador's oil industry, the country's economic engine, which desperately needs a reset. Correa leaves behind an oil industry headed in the wrong direction amid a dearth of investment, low prices