$16 billion environmental lawsuit tests Chevron

[AlphaCentauri]

The case filed by Ecuadorean indigenous groups is one of the largest environmental suits against an oil firm and could set a precedent. Chevron dismisses it as a 'charade.'
Lago Agrio, Ecuador - On a chaotic street in this sweltering jungle town, Emergildo Criollo spent several days near the entrance to a courthouse that looks more like a run-down mall.

He was, he says, "vigilando" – watching.

"We waited to know the moment he arrived," says the middle-aged indigenous man who was raised in this oil-rich Amazonian rain forest near Ecuador's northern border with Colombia.

The man Mr. Criollo and his friends were waiting for is Richard Cabrera, a court-appointed expert who last week poured fuel on an epic environmental lawsuit filed by Ecuadorean indigenous groups against US-based Chevron-Texaco.

Mr. Cabrera, an Ecuadorean geological engineer, recommended to an Ecuadorean judge last Tuesday that Chevron pay $8 billion to $16 billion for environmental damages if the company loses a bitterly contested case that started in 1993 with a lawsuit in New York courts, which ruled that the case should be tried in Ecuador.

The Ecuadorean case, which Chevron has repeatedly rejected as flawed, is one of the largest environmental suits against an oil company and could raise the political risks for multinationals extracting resources from similar remote and pristine regions.

"The litigation is terribly important," says Professor Robert Benson, law professor emeritus at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "If Chevron loses the case there, certainly a historic precedent will be set putting oil companies on notice."



http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0409/p06s01-woam.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Barrack Obama and Leahy named supporting Ecuadorean citizens in your article:

In February, Sens. Barack Obama (D) of Illinois and Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont sent a letter to US Trade Representative Rob Portman urging him to ignore an apparent campaign by Chevron to exclude Ecuador from trade negotiations until the Ecuadorean government shuts down the lawsuit. "While we are not prejudging the outcome of the case, we do believe the 30,000 indigenous residents of Ecuador deserve their day in court," the senators wrote.

Very glad to hear this.

Will return to finish the article later.

I have seen photos like the one on the first page: hideous, aren't they? There are some in google images under Ecuador oil pollution:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=active&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2004-37%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=Ecuador+oil+pollution&btnG=Search+Images

Someone, something has to stop these monster corporations. They are entirely without conscience.