UPDATE:Chevron Should Pay At Least $8.3 Billion In Suit-Ecuador Expert

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Dow Jones Newswires

UPDATE:Chevron Should Pay At Least $8.3 Billion In Suit-Ecuador Expert

April 02, 2008: 02:56 PM EST

By Mercedes Alvaro

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

QUITO -(Dow Jones)- An independent expert has submitted a court report recommending that U.S. oil company Chevron Corp. (CVX) pay at least $8.3 billion - or as much as $16 billion - in compensation for environmental damages in Ecuador, plaintiffs' lawyers told Dow Jones Newswires on Wednesday.

Chevron is facing a lawsuit in Ecuador for alleged contamination in the Amazon region of Lago Agrio by Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001. The company is accused of having used out-of-date technology that led to environmental damage.

The complaint started in 1993 with a lawsuit in New York courts, which ruled that the case should be tried in Ecuador. In May 2003, several indigenous groups filed a lawsuit against the company in Lago Agrio, Nueva Loja.

The official report was submitted Tuesday to the court in Nueva Loja by expert Richard Cabrera, lawyer Pablo Fajardo said.

Fajardo said that, according to Cabrera's report, environmental damage is estimated at $8.3 billion, and that Texaco saved around $8 billion by scrimping on its cleanup efforts, by using poor technology and having bad environmental practices.




Read more: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200804021456DOWJONESDJONLINE000855_FORTUNE5.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. Photos of oil pollution in Ecuador:

Daryl Hannah is pulling an Erin Brockovich and getting directly involved with a crisis happening overseas to lend her support. Ecuador Indians are suing oil giant Chevron because of their failure to clean up billions of gallons of polluted waste water. Hannah trudged through the jungle yesterday to visit the site first hand and witnessed a sad display of neglect and devastation. From the article,

“Hannah, 46, star of the 1984 movie ”Splash,” rolled up a sleeve of her shirt and dipped it into an oil pit, holding it above her head as the thick liquid dripped down her arm.

”Obviously they’re suffering severely,” she said by telephone from her hotel in the jungle town. ”A whole host of horrors have come their way with the advent of supposed civilization.”

The plaintiffs are seeking $6 billion in damages, claiming that Texaco Petroleum Co., which merged with Chevron in 2001 and spent three decades extracting oil here, dumped more than 18 billion gallons of oily wastewater into the rain forest, and failed to properly clean it up.”

http://www.ecorazzi.com/2007/06/05/daryl-hannah-meets-with-ecuador-president-over-oil-dump/





There are far sadder ones, but I don't want to post them. Too miserable.

[Usrename]

2. I hope someone will make them pay.

:grr:

[Peace Patriot]

3. Ecuador also just sued somebody--Colombia, was it?--for pesticide spraying

of small peasant farmers in Ecuador's Colombian border areas--in the murderous, corrupt, failed Bush-U.S. "war on drugs." The toxic pesticides that are sprayed damage human DNA, and kill animals and food crops, as well as coca leaf plants. It's like filling your house with RAID to kill a fly--over-the-top poisoning of people and the environment, in an utterly useless effort supposedly to stop small indigenous farmers from growing coca leaves, which they have done for thousand of years. It is an indigenous medicine--full of vitamins and protein, and essential to survival in high-altitude Andes climates. Coca leaf chewing is a common practice. Coca leaf tea is served in restaurants throughout the Andes--it's a mild stimulant like coffee, but healthier. So they harm these farmers, and drive them off the land--into urban squalor (slave labor force)--and then the big drug lords move in, and following them, Monsanto and big corporate ag, for environmentally ruinous biofuel production.

Ecuador just filed suit about this, in the World Court, and I just remembered, yes, it was against Colombia, cuz I was thinking they should also sue the U.S. and DynCorp (our privatized military in South America). Get these fuckers to pay hard cash for bombing Ecuador a few weeks ago, and trying to catch Ecuador and Venezuela in a Rumsfeld- (I'm sure of it)-designed war trap. Chavez got them out of it (according to President Lula da Silva in Brazil, who called Chavez "the great peacemaker" last week), and it was pretty obvious anyway. President Rafael Correa of Ecuador was understandably furious, and it sure looks like Chavez advised him against retaliating in kind. Are these lawsuits the "other path"--the non-bloody way--to get at the real culprits, not the ordinary soldiers who would be forced to fight for Colombia and U.S. global predator interests, but the global predators themselves, the ones with the towers of money stolen from us all?

In any case, Ecuador is championing the people in these lawsuits--the little people who get hurt and bloodied by global corporate predator profiteering. It's a wonder to behold--a government championing its people.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Ecuador Sues Colombia to Stop Anti-Coca Herbicide Spray

Ecuador Sues Colombia to Stop Anti-Coca Herbicide Spray
THE HAGUE, The Netherlands, March 31, 2008 (ENS) - The government of Ecuador today filed suit at the International Court of Justice against the government of Colombia, in an effort to stop or restrict aerial anti-coca spraying that has allegedly sickened people on the Ecuadorean side of the border and harmed livestock, farmland, and sensitive, ecologically diverse rainforest areas.

The lawsuit follows seven years of persistent but unsuccessful diplomatic efforts on Ecuador's part to convince its neighbor to the north to establish a 10 kilometer (six mile) no-spray zone along their shared border.

Colombia is expected to argue that the aerial fumigation of illegal coca farms, which provide the raw material for cocaine production, is a linchpin of the war on drugs. Ecuador claims that the chemical sprays have sickened its people, poisoned farmland and damaged ecologically sensitive areas.

At a press conference in Quito announcing the lawsuit, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister María Isabel Salvador said, "With the purpose of establishing the existence and dimensions of the afflictions suffered by Ecuador as a result of these and past fumigations, last year President Rafael Correa created the Ecuadorian Scientific Commission, comprised of eminent scientists from our country.

More:
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2008/2008-03-31-05.asp

Yeah, b-b-b-but the common people just don't have the big bucks! It could be a plan doomed to failure. What's in it for them?
Oh, wait! That's the Republican way of thinking.

[fascisthunter]

4. Good! (nt)

[bluesmail]

6. yes, good, K&R

Ecuador's not so tiny and fraidy-cat as some may think.

[flashl]

7. K&R

[GleninDublin]

8. the usual trick

Oil companies knowingly target small and vunerable nations, isolated regions and indigenous peoples, or alternatively corrupt governments, so that they can get away with this sort of outrage. See Nigeria and Ireland for just two examples.

[Zorro]

9. Hmmm

I notice there's no mention of reports that Texaco was a minority partner with PetroEcuador, the state-run oil company.

Seems like it's only the American oil company that is to blame for all the pollution.

I wasn't aware that PetroEcuador has such a sterling reputation for being so environmentally friendly.