QUITO, Ecuador (AP) – Ecuador says that Canadian oil company Ivanhoe Energy has won rights to explore an Amazon oil block.

Ecuador’s state oil company says that Ivanhoe will spend $4 billion to develop an area that could contain 4.5 billion barrels of extra-heavy crude.

Petroecuador says Ivanhoe must pay the government $37 for every barrel it produces, regardless of any change in crude prices.

It said Monday that the project could boost Ecuador’s oil output by about 20 percent.

A spokesman for Ivanhoe in Vancouver did not return calls for comment. The project is the company’s first in Latin America.

Ecuador now produces about 500,000 barrels of crude a day, with oil sales financing about 30 percent of its federal budget.