“Big Oil Bites Back”
Investors.com, May 28, 2009
“Chevron hasn’t operated in Ecuador since 1992 and got a clean bill of health from Ecuador in 1998. Any pollution now is a product of Ecuador’s mismanaged state oil company.”
Read more »
“Justice or Extortion of Chevron by Amazon Activists? The Economist Asks: Is the Rule of Law the Servant of Politics in Ecuador?”
San Francisco Sentinel, May 27, 2009
“President Correa, as The Economist points out, has aligned himself with the American trial attorneys and protesters and publicly stated his support for them. His struggling authoritarian government is nearly bankrupt and any money he can get in a lawsuit against Chevron will help his strongman government continue to survive.”
Read more »
“Did Amazon Defense Coalition Violate Terms of Logan Act While Waging Chevron Lawsuit?”
Bob McCarty Writes, May 27, 2009
“American trial lawyers “cozied up to leaders of the Ecuadoran government in zealous pursuit of a $27 billion judgment against Chevron Corporation.”
Read more »
Steven Donziger, the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs’ case, testified in front of a Congressional committee on April 28, 2009.
Throughout the hearing, he charged Chevron with a long list of highly inaccurate claims. This document responds to those charges and sets the record straight.
The Amazon Defense Coalition, the financial beneficiary of the lawsuit in Ecuador, issued a press release on 5/8/09 regarding a waste pit at Shushufindi-38 near Manuel Salinas’ home. The release alleges that Mr. Salinas’ water well is contaminated, and Texaco Petroleum was to blame.
In fact, Texaco Petroleum remediated all of the pits it was responsible for. Petroecuador is responsible for remediating the Shushufindi-38 site, and began that remediation in 2007. In addition, Petroecuador can be seen here performing a work-over (work-overs are major repairs or modifications to a well) on the site as recently as November 17, 2005 (others occurred in 1991, 1993, 1994 and two in 2002, all after Petroecuador assumed responsibility for Sushufindi-38.) In 2005, both parties sampled Mr. Salinas’ well and found that the water met USEPA drinking water standards for hydrocarbons and metals.
FICTION:
“…[N]ew proof has emerged that the oil giant never touched the majority of toxic waste pits that it certified as clean to Ecuador’s government in exchange for a legal release,” said a lawyer for the Amazon Defense Coalition. …”The release….does provide evidence of an underlying fraud that proves the remediation never really occurred, despite Chevron’s claims…” - Amazon Defense Coalition Press Release: 3/24/09
FACT:
Texaco Petroleum’s remediation program is a well-documented matter of public record, and this “evidence” of an alleged fraud is a knowing and deliberate fabrication by the plaintiffs. The Government of Ecuador and Petroecuador certified – and investigations by the Controller General’s office in Ecuador have confirmed – that Texaco Petroleum completed remediation in every one of the pits for which it was responsible, in accordance with all local and international regulations, accepted operating practices and contractual obligations.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys and the activists know – and are conveniently ignoring – that Petroecuador did not cooperate in the remediation program at the time when Texaco Petroleum carried out its commitments, and that Petroecuador did not begin a remediation program until 2005, promising to remediate all the remaining pits by 2010.
FICTION:
“During that period Texaco dumped 18.5 billion gallons of formation waters, a toxic byproduct of the drilling process, directly into a vast uninhabited area of the northern Ecuadorian Amazon in contravention of industry standards of the time.” - Amazon Watch Press Release: 6/4/07
FACT:
Texaco Petroleum always properly treated this naturally occurring “produced water” that comes to the surface during oil production before discharging it.
Moreover, Texaco Petroleum’s practice of releasing treated produced water into the environment was legal in Ecuador and in other countries like Venezuela and Colombia. Stream and river samples collected during the Judicial Inspections show that all of the water meets USEPA drinking water standards for hydrocarbons or metals except for those locations where Petroecuador had recently had a major spill. Notably, Mr. Cabrera did not take a single sample of water from a river, creek or stream. In 1998 the World Bank called the treatment and discharge of produced water an acceptable practice, and as recently as 2003, 800 million barrels of produced water were discharged worldwide (OGP, 2004) – 100 million in South America alone. Much of the 30 million barrels of produced water discharged in the Western U.S. was actually used in agricultural irrigation and wildlife watering holes.
FICTION:
“The existence of an environmental damage and the presence of toxic elements such as chromium, benzene, benzopyrene, and innumerous health threatening elements have been systematically proven.” - Pablo Fajardo, Radio Tropicana: 1/31/08
FACT:
While plaintiffs’ attorneys continually claim that carcinogens are present, the facts are very different. Mr. Cabrera didn’t analyze a single soil sample for benzene and he did not analyze any soil sample for any potentially carcinogenic heavy metals, including hexavalent chromium. He did analyze 178 soil samples for polyaromatic hydrocarbons including benzo[a]pyrene. No benzo[a]pyrene was detected in 171 of those samples (96%), and the 7 samples where it was found were from Petroecuador sites, not pits remediated by Texaco Petroleum. Mr. Cabrera collected a total of nine water samples either directly from water in open pits or from boreholes within pits and no benzo[a]pyrene was detected in any of these samples.
The actions of the plaintiffs speak louder than words. While continuing to lie about finding benzene in media statements, the reality is that the plaintiffs stopped testing for this compound in 2005 after test results continually returned zero traces of benzene.
