Chevron Ecuador Muddled By Petroecuador, Canadian, Foreign Oil Companies
CHEVRON ECUADOR MUDDLE BY PETROECUADOR, CANADIAN, FOREIGN OIL COMPANIES
Lost in the entire Chevron Ecuador PR and legal battles is a little known report that between 2002 and 2010, Petroecuador – the state-owned oil company that took over the oil fields owned by Texaco, just after that company was purchased by Chevron – was responsible for an estimated 1,415 “environmental accidents” according to the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo.
The oil company operated in five oil fields – Shushufindi, Sacha, Auca, Lago Agrio, and Libertador – where the damage happened. There is no report that Petroecuador has completed environmental clean-up in those areas.
Locally, Petroecuador is seen as the real problem, even as the government, which effectively runs the media, has formed a public view against Chevron as well.
But lost in all of this, from fraudulently prepared reports, to intimidation of Ecuadorian judges, is the fact that the story of oil exploration in Ecuador is one of the actions of many companies, as Chevron has not been in operation since 1992, and Occidental Petroleum was the last American company to work in the nation until they were kicked out in 2007.
For example, little discussed is the role of Canadian oil companies in Ecuador. Firms like Ivanhoe Energy and Encana, which started operations in 1999.
Encana, like Chevron, has been the focus of a movie, this one called Between Midnight and the Rooster’s Crow. But what makes this interesting is that with Encana, Ivanhoe, Repsol-YPF from Spain, Occidental Petroleum, Teikoku from Japan, the Brazilian national oil company Petrobras, the French oil company Perenco, and now Andes Petroleum, a consortium of Chinese oil producers, it’s impossible to argue that the Ecuador oil story is one between just Chevron and Petroecuador.
It also makes it all but impossible to claim that oil wells in Lago Agrio were only used by Chevron – the facts just don’t support that claim.
Why?
Because Lago Agrio is where Andes Petroleum Co currently operates, and where Encana worked before the Chinese entered Ecuador, buying the rights and production facilities for $1.4 billion, where Chevron, again, left in 1992 and engaged in cleanup work through 1995. Moreover, several firms, including Petroecuador, have produced oil in Lago Agrio over that time through to today.
This is 2011.
What’s lost on American activists is that oil funds an estimated 50 percent of Ecuador’s national budget. That, coupled with the fact that Ecuador produces more oil than it needs for its economy, and you have a situation where many foreign companies, not just a few, want to and have produced oil in Ecuador, and a government that’s still all too interested in courting them.
And that, as Ecuador becomes a socialist dictatorship, and the perfect environment for an uprising, very much like the one that happened in September, involving Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and the Ecuador police, who kidnapped him.
Their concerns: maintaining their benefits admit budget cuts. Ecuador’s fiscal situation’s not going to make life nice there for a while.
Stay tuned.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail?entry_id=89510
WHY CHEVRON’S LAWYERS MUST BE AMONG THE BUSIEST IN THE WORLD
Oil is the dirtiest industry in the world and Chevron, one the world’s largest companies, must be the oiliest. That’s saying something when you consider it has rivals including BP, Shell, Exxon and Oxy. Never mind the gross violations of the Ecuadoran environment for which it was punished this week with a $8bn (£5bn) fine. When it comes to aggressive legal tactics, vindictiveness, threats, pollution, intimidation, tax evasion and links with venal and repressive regimes, it is in a league of its own as its corporate lawyers bludgeon, bully and try to beat with the law any opposition it meets around the world.
Here’s a small taste of how the company works. Back in the late 1990s, it hired and transported the ruthless Nigerian military to remove a group of impoverished villagers from an company oil platform they had peacefully occupied in protest against pollution and the lack of jobs in the Niger Delta. Two villagers were killed and others were injured and then tortured by the soldiers. In 2009, the case ended up in San Francisco where a jury found Chevron not liable but then the company – whose turnover makes it bigger than 137 countries – tried to sue the villagers for its costs of $485,000. Even the judge remarked that the case was deeply mismatched. “The economic disparity between plaintiffs, who are Nigerian villagers, and defendants, international oil companies, cannot be more stark,” she said.
As a corporate citizen, the company is lousy. It is involved in polluting tar sands in Canada, massive coal mining operations in the US, and it is in constant battle with the authorities and communities over illegal gas flaring in Nigeria and Kazakhstan. It is also one of the world’s leading 10 lobbyists. It has been strongly criticised for – but has denied – human rights violations on three continents. But what it cannot dispute is that it has partnered and supported dictators and despots in Burma, Africa and Asia.
Its lawyers must be some of the busiest in the world. Court records show that in the past 20 years, the company has been made to pay around $2bn in fines and settlements to governments and communities for tax evasion, and environmental violations around the world.
But its handling of the Ecuadoran case breaks new ground in how a corporation tries to fight its corner and avoid its liabilities.
While not itself responsible for the massive oil spills that occurred in the Amazon forests – it only acquired legal responsibility when it bought Texaco – it has waged an extraordinary legal battle on the plaintiffs who took it to court.
Its tactics in the 18-year trial have shocked observers. These have included:
• Spending millions of dollars lobbying the US government to cancel Ecuador’s trade preferences. For this it employed political heavyweights such as the former Clinton trade officials Mickey Kantor and Mack McLarty and Republican super-lobbyist Wayne Berman.
• Denying to the very end of the case that its operations in Ecuador had harmed anyone or the environment. This was despite admitting that it had dumped many billions of gallons of chemical-laden “water of formation” into the streams and rivers of the Amazon that indigenous groups relied on, and in face of independent studies suggesting high rates of cancer and other health problems in the communities close to the spills and dumps.
• Threatening the Ecuadoran trial judge with criminal sanctions and prison if he did not dismiss the case.
• Counter-suing all 47 named Ecuadoran plaintiffs in New York.
• Trying to get a US judge to bar any American lawyer working on the case from enforcing a judgment from Ecuador’s court anywhere in the world.
• Claiming that the indigenous groups were trying to extort money from Chevron.
• Accusing Ecuadoran lawyers of forging the signatures of 20 of the 48 named plaintiffs.
• Accusing the indigenous groups of fraud.
• Accusing expert witnesses and organisations of racketeering.
Chevron blustered this that the judgment is illegitimate and unenforceable, the “product of fraud and contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence”. The indigenous peoples responded that no amount of money would ever recompense them for the damage to their lives and environment. No one expects the company to pay its fine. So the only real winners are the lawyers.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/feb/18/chevron-lawyers
SELVA- Vida Sin Fronteras 