Chevron could be liable for $27 billion in Ecuador

[n2doc]

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador -- Deep in the northern Ecuadoran rain forest, next to pits filled with noxious sludge, a lawyer on his very first case argued that a U.S. oil company had deliberately fouled a swath of jungle nearly the size of Delaware during two decades of production.

Wearing a straw hat for the recent outdoor hearing, Pablo Fajardo was delivering the final arguments in a lawsuit that began in New York in 1993 against Texaco but is wrapping up here against Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001. The stakes are high -- and so tinged with nationalism that Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has openly sided with the plaintiffs, 48 individuals representing tens of thousands of people in the region.

If the judge rules against Chevron, the company could face the largest damages award ever handed down in an environmental case, dwarfing the $3.9 billion awarded against ExxonMobil for the 1989 spill in Alaska.

A report by a court-appointed team last year concluded that pollution caused mainly by Texaco's Ecuadoran affiliate, Texaco Petroleum, had led to 1,401 cancer deaths in this stretch of Amazonian jungle. The team's leader, Ecuadoran geologist Richard Cabrera, reported finding high levels of toxins in soil and water samples near Texaco's production sites and assessed damages at up to $27.3 billion.

more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/27/AR2009042703717.html

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Hope things go Ecuador's way.

[vinylsolution]

2. But 20 years on, and Exxon....

.... has paid not one cent in reparations to the Alaskan villagers.

No doubt Sarah Palin is very proud of that.

I expect Chevron and Toxico will be keeping their cash, regardless of any Ecuadorian court decision.