Two bloggers, Carter Wood of ShopFloor.org and Jeff Poor of Business & Media Institute are pointing a finger at the New York Times for using a photo and a story that seems to blame Chevron for environmental damage from oil production in Ecuador. Chevron has not operated in Ecuador since 1992. It turned over its production to the state-run company Petroecuador.
A murky photo to say the least
Chevron has been fighting Ecuador - who would get 90 percent of the estimated $27 billion in the lawsuit if Chevron lost - in this case. The photo was used in a NY Times story called "Ecuador Oil Pollution Case Only Grows Murkier."
The problem with the photo, Wood and others claim, is that the photo applies to Petroecuador. But I will go a step beyond that. There have been over 100 oil spills in the Ecuador Amazon region which includes the town of Lago Agrio since 1992, so a combination of firms including Petroecuador are to blame, but not of them American.
Ecuador kicked Occidental Petroleum out of the country in 2007 and took over Chevron production in 1992. So the finger points to the state-run oil company.
Wood explains just who's really behind the lawsuit from his point of view:
The lawsuit is being financed by the Philadelphia law firm of Kohn, Swift and Graf, directed by New York trial lawyer Steven Donziger, and marketed by the Amazon Defense Coalition, which would receive the money from any settlement. And the legal/activist lawsuit is indeed a shakedown intended to force a settlement from Chevron for pollution supposedly left by Texaco, which Chevron purchased in 2001. Texaco operated in Ecuador as Texpet in a joint exploration and production venture with the government-owned oil company, Petroecuador, up until 1992. (See this Texaco history, “Chevron in Ecuador.”)
1992. 1992. 1992. 1992. We stress the year because any oil now appearing as liquid in Ecuador is the responsibility of Petroecuador. First, TexPet remediated all the sites assigned to it for clean-up by the government of Ecuador, which released the company from future claims. Second, oil doesn’t stay liquid on the surface for 17 years!
I will go a step further because someone must be paying Kohn, Swift and Graf for that law firm to be able to pay Donziger, and the Amazon Defense Coalition, and Amazon Watch. Remember law firms do not have to disclose their clients.
Who would be interested in arranging a deal to keep this money flow going from law firm to lawyer to anti-American-oil-company activist to sue an American company?
Well, think about it. While Amazon Watch and the Amazon Defense Coalition may claim to represent the "indigenous people" of Ecuador, why haven't they filed a lawsuit against Ecuador? After all, to this day, 65 percent of the Amazon is zoned to allow oil production.
That's no accident.
What do you mean those waste pits have nothing to do with Chevron/Texaco? Texaco built them! The contaminants leaked out of them because they were badly designed and it IS Texaco’s fault. Turning over the mess to PetroEcuador, does not release Chevron from the responsibility of building a faulty system that caused the contamination.
ReplyDeleteTexaco/Chevron didn’t care to make sure its systems are up to standards… they took the oil and left the mess…
You can run but you cannot hide. Once again Chevron is trying to distract us from the real facts of the case with some bogus PR spin. Here is what is real: Texaco/Chevron knowingly built and operated a sub-standard system, which it exclusively operated from 1964-1990. As such, it is responsible for all of the pollution its faulty system generated. International law does not allow a company to circumvent its legal responsibilities by simply leaving the problem in its wake and pretending it no longer exists as Texaco/Chevron did when it left Ecuador. Even if the photo in question is of a waste pit USED by PetroEcaudor, it is still a photo of a waste pit DESIGNED and BUILT by Texaco and consequently, Chevron is liable for cleaning up the mess.
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