Posts Tagged ‘Ecuador’

4 January 2012

An Ecuadorean appeals court has upheld a ruling that Chevron should pay damages totalling $18.2bn (£11.5bn) over Amazon oil pollution.

Chevron said the judgement was “illegitimate” and “a fraud”.

Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, was accused of dumping toxic materials in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

The original ruling ordered Chevron to pay $8.6bn in damages, which was more than doubled after the company failed to make a public apology.

“We ratify the ruling of February 14 2011 in all its parts, including the sentence for moral reparation,” the court in the Amazonian city of Lago Agrio said in its ruling, according to Reuters.

Long-running battle

In a statement released in response, Chevron said the decision was a “glaring example of the politicization and corruption of Ecuador’s judiciary”. It said it would continue to seek recourse through proceedings outside Ecuador.

The decision is the latest twist in a long-running legal battle between Chevron and the Ecuadorean plaintiffs.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadoreans, in a case which has dragged on for years.

Ecuadorean indigenous groups said Texaco dumped more than 18bn gallons (68bn litres) of toxic materials into unlined pits and rivers between 1972 and 1992.

But Chevron says Texaco spent $40m cleaning up the area during the 1990s, and signed an agreement with Ecuador in 1998 absolving it of any further responsibility.

In September, a US appeals court overturned a decision to block the collection of the fine from the company.

Plaintiffs, who had agreed not to attempt to collect the damages until the appeals process was completed in Ecuador, welcomed Tuesday’s ruling.

“This [ruling] confirms and ratifies that the company polluted and affected the Amazon,” they said in a statement.

“It is necessary to clarify that no amount will be enough to repair all the crime they did in our area, nor will it be enough to bring the dead back to life.”

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa described the dispute as a “David and Goliath” battle.

“I think justice has been done,” he said after the ruling was announced.

“The harm that Chevron caused to the Amazon cannot be denied.”

Chevron has challenged the fine, arguing that lawyers and supporters of the indigenous groups who brought the case conspired to fabricate evidence.

In a previous separate case, international arbitrators ordered the Ecuadorean government to pay $96m to Chevron because Ecuador’s courts had violated international law as a result of delays in resolving commercial disputes involving Texaco.

SOURCE ARTICLE

RELATED ARTICLES

• US court upholds Chevron oil fine
• Ecuador’s oil battle far from over
• Chevron hits back in Amazon row

FROM PAGE 23 OF THE I NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED 20 JUNE 2011

By Cahal Milmo
Chief Reporter

Banana labourers in Latin America who claim they were left infertile and crippled by exposure to a dangerous pesticide have filed lawsuits against their former employers and chemical manufacturers, including the British-Dutch oil giant Shell.

In the latest step in their 25-year battle for compensation, 160 former plantation staff from Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica have lodged the claims in Louisiana in the United States against two of the world’s largest banana producers – Dole and Chiquita – and against Shell’s American subsidiary and the chemical company Dow.

The workers claim all four companies allowed the powerful fumigant known as DBCP to be used across plantations for more than two decades despite knowing it could cause devastating side-effects in humans. Lawyers representing the workers say their clients are entitled to individual awards worth millions of pounds following DBCP’s use from the 1960s until the late 1970s. The claim alleges that use of the fumigant may have continued into the 1990s.

Dole and Dow said they would be strongly contesting the lawsuits. Shell and Chiquita did not respond to requests for comment.

Scott Hendler, the lawyer bringing the cases, said: “It is my belief that… a jury will return verdicts for damages in the millions.”

An environmental expert told a court in Ecuador that oil company Chevron Corp should pay $27 billion in compensation for environmental damage in the country, the company said on Wednesday.

In view of the overnight news from Nigeria it seems an appropriate time to publish for the first time on the Internet the most dramatic masterpiece about Shell and its atrocious track record, especially in Nigeria, that we have ever seen. Authored by Andrew Rowell, it was published by The Guardian over 10 years ago on 15 November 1997 under the title: Unloveable Shell, the Goddess of Oil.