The Chevron Ecuador Lawsuit Trial | Chevron's Views & Opinions

Petroecuador February Oil Exports Rise 17% On Year To $896Mln

Petroecuador, Ecuador’s state oil company, reported oil-export revenues of $896 million in February, a 17% increase from the $764 million registered in February 2011, Petroecuador reported Tuesday.

In terms of volume, Petroecuador exported 8.61 million barrels of crude oil in February, down 6% from 9.15 million barrels registered one year before.

Exports of Oriente crude in February were 5.69 million barrels, while exports of Napo crude were 2.92 million barrels.

The average price of Oriente in February was $104.58 a barrel while the price of Napo crude was $103.30 a barrel.

Figures have been rounded.

-Dow Jones

PetroEcuador Appoints Carlos Pareja as New Head of Refining

PetroEcuador, the South American country’s state-owned oil company, named its former president Carlos Pareja the head of refining operations, four years after firing him for poor management.

Pareja, a chemical engineer who was the country’s vice minister of oil until his appointment, will replace Marcelo Robalino, the company said in an e-mailed statement today, citing Chief Executive Officer Marco Calvopina. The statement didn’t say why Robalino was stepping down.

Ecuador, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ smallest member, is reorganizing its operations after seeing production decline 2.7 percent to 504,000 barrels a day since President Rafael Correa took office in January 2007, according to the country’s central bank. PetroEcuador is spending $1.4 billion to repair its Esmeraldas and Shushufindi refineries to boost output and improve fuel quality.

Pareja was dismissed in 2007 amid protests that halted production at 47 oil wells in the country’s Amazon region and prompted Correa to declare the company in a state of emergency.

–Bloomberg

Two judges who handled the $18.2 billion environment lawsuit against Chevron Corp. (CVX) in Ecuador were dismissed by the board of the country’s Judicial Council, accused of improperly freeing an alleged drug trafficker.

According to a Feb. 29 disciplinary file reviewed on Thursday by Dow Jones Newswires, judges Nicolas Zambrano and Leonardo Ordonez, of the Provincial Court of Sucumbios, improperly freed an alleged drug trafficker. The suspect was charged with possession of half a ton of cocaine.

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An international tribunal has found that it has jurisdiction to decide if Ecuador violated a treaty with the United States requiring it to guarantee a fair trial to Chevron Corp in an environmental lawsuit that ended in an $18 billion judgment against the oil company.

A Tuesday posting on Chevron’s website that was attributed to the tribunal read: “The tribunal declares that it has jurisdiction to proceed to the merits phase of these arbitration proceedings.”

The panel was set up through The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), and works under rules established by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law.

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Ecuador’s highest court on Thursday upheld a criminal libel verdict favoring President Rafael Correa, sentencing three newspaper executives and a columnist to three years in prison each and ordering them to pay a total of $42 million in damages.

The defendants, joined by international press freedom and human rights groups, had called the case an attempt by Correa to bankrupt the country’s leading opposition newspaper, El Universo, and part of a concerted campaign to stifle free speech and silence critics.

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