Battle Between Indigenous Ecuadorians and the U.S. Oil Giant Chevron

This morning I was off on my usual hunt across the net checking out the latest news for material. I started my hunt at Democracy Now .Org where I came across an article by Greg Palast, an investigative journalist who is involved in investigating the plight of the Cofan Indians of Ecuador. They are involved in a legal battle with one of the Oil Giants, Chevron. As if deforestation that is adding to global warming were not enough here is an article oil contamination on a grand scale.

Just for comparison  the Exxon Valdes disaster in Alaska in 1989 spilled 11,000,000 gallons in Prince William Sound in Alaska. In the Chevron case we re talking 18 BILLION gallons of oil polluted water.

Lets switch scenarios here for a moment. If this were to take place in the U.S., lets say in Yellowstone National Park you can well imagine what the outcry would be and the national demonstrations that would take place. But, as has usually been the case in such matters especially when talking about Mega Bucks Giants, these sorts of catastrophes end up in out of the way regions of the world away from the prying eyes of stateside environmentalist and mainstream media and U.S. federal laws.

This is a report that you will not soon forget and might very well make your blood boil with rage and can very well be viewed as a modern tale of David and Goliath!

Greg Palast Reports on the Battle Between Indigenous Ecuadorians and the U.S. Oil Giant Chevron

Investigative Journalist Greg Palast files this report from the rainforests of Ecuador, where an indigenous tribe is suing Chevron for $12 billion for contaminating the Amazon. We also play part of Palast’s interview with Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa. More…

You will find Real Video Stream, Real Audio Stream and MP3 Downloads at Democracy Now.Org on this and other important stories.

More on this situation: 

Jungle Law

In 1972, crude oil began to flow from Texaco’s wells in the area around Lago Agrio (“sour lake”), in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Born that same year, Pablo Fajardo is now the lead attorney in an epic lawsuit—among the largest environmental suits in history—against Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001. Reporting on an emotional battle in a makeshift jungle courtroom, the author investigates how many hundreds of square miles of surrounding rain forest became a toxic-waste dump.

by William Langewiesche May 2007

In a forsaken little town in the Ecuadorean Amazon, an overgrown oil camp called Lago Agrio, the giant Chevron Corporation has been maneuvered into a makeshift courtroom and is being sued to answer for conditions in 1,700 square miles of rain forest said by environmentalists to be one of the world’s most contaminated industrial sites. The pollution consists of huge quantities of crude oil and associated wastes, mixed in with the toxic compounds used for drilling operations—a noxious soup that for decades was dumped into leaky pits, or directly into the Amazonian watershed. The company that did much of this work was Texaco—an outfit with a swashbuckling reputation worldwide. More…

Chevron says victim of unfair trial in Ecuador

02 Jul 2007 22:34:18 GMT Source: Reuters
By Alonso Soto

QUITO, July 2 (Reuters) – Oil major Chevron Corp. <CVX.N> alleged irregularities in a $6 billion lawsuit that accuses it of polluting Ecuador’s rainforest and will challenge any ruling against the U.S. firm, a top company lawyer said on Monday.
“The due process is not being respected in our case,” Ricardo Veiga, Chevron’s managing counsel for Latin America, told Reuters during a visit to Quito.
“We will not hesitate to go to international tribunals to review what we believe is an unfair trial and lack of due process in this country,” he added.
Jungle residents, including the Cofan Indian tribe, accuse Chevron’s Texaco subsidiary of dumping 18 billion gallons of oil-polluted water from 1972 to 1992. Nearly 30,000 jungle residents are demanding money with which to clean up. More…

Cofan Guardians of the Rain Forest website

Tags: Alonso Soto, Big Corporations, Cofan Indians, Contamination, Ecuador, Environment, Exploitation, Greg Palast, Oil, William Langewiesche