Chevron CEO talks BP Oil Spill; takes on Ecuador protestors

John Watson of Chevron

Echoing what seems to be this week's theme of combative CEOs (remember Carol Bartz' F-bomb blast against TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington?), Chevron's Chief Executive Officer John Watson said Wednesday at that firm's Houston Shareholder meeting that they've asked the U.S Government to raise safety standards for offshore drilling in the wake of the BP Oil Spill Disaster.

Acting as a member of one of two industry task forces that report to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Watson explained that they gave Salazar a document that explains what procedures should be implemented and which ones should be improved in order to avoid another BP Oil Spill Disaster.

In that issue, the oil drilling rig called The Deepwater Horizon and owned by Transocean Company, suffered an explosion that killed 11 workers, two week ago. The result has been a massive oil spill that rivals the Exxon Valdez Alaska disaster in size. "The energy industry is learning a great deal," Watson said according to The Wall Street Journal, "If there is something we need to adopt, we will adopt it."

Watson said Chevron reviewed its own safety standards after the BP Oil Spill Disaster, as its one of the largest oil producers in the enormous Gulf of Mexico.

In other annual shareholders’ meeting news, Chevron’s Watson said he would protect the oil company and its shareholders against the fraudulent claims made against it in Ecuador. Chevron, which purchased Texaco in 2001, inherited a lawsuit against Texaco that claims it polluted the Amazon River region with ‘produced water,’ a byproduct of the oil drilling process.

But, as Watson noted and recent news stories have reported, the case against Chevron in Ecuador has turned into a legal circus and become overshadowed by a series of alleged legal and political frauds in Ecuador.

Watson pointed to evidence such as the Ecuadorian judge who had to remove himself from the case because he was caught up in a bribery scandal against Chevron, and, more recently, significant and damaging evidence that the entire case has been written by the plaintiffs against Chevron and then simply copied by the ‘independent court expert’ Richard Cabrera and submitted to the court.

There is mounting evidence that when this trial concludes, and Chevron is found guilty, that no court in the world will enforce the $27 billion judgment against Chevron because it will be tainted by fraud and illegal activities by the plaintiffs.

Stay tuned.