Chevron spying on Ecuadorian lawyers who defeated them in $18 billion judgement

By Amazon Defense Coalition

Facing increased financial risk in Latin America, Chevron has launched a corporate espionage campaign designed to intimidate and track the whereabouts of the lead lawyers who recently won an $18 billion judgment for environmental damage against the oil giant in Ecuador’s courts, said the Amazon Defense Coalition.

The purpose of the espionage campaign – being carried out by at least four different investigation firms working for Chevron in the United States and Latin America – is partly to threaten the legal team and partly to obtain confidential information about the strategy of the rainforest communities as they prepare to file collection actions against the oil giant’s assets around the world, said Karen Hinton, the U.S. spokesperson for the Ecuadorians.

Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer for the rainforest communities in Ecuador and himself a target of the campaign, issued an urgent call to human rights organizations and governments worldwide to protect the lawyers and other advocates working on the case.

“Evidence is mounting that the lives and well-being of those working on the case are under an orchestrated attack from Chevron,” said Fajardo. “We are urgently calling on all people of conscience to protect the right of the rainforest communities devastated by Chevron’s contamination to continue to pursue their legal claims free from threats and intimidation.”

A court in February of 2011 found Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic water of formation throughout an area the size of Rhode Island, decimating indigenous groups and causing an outbreak of cancer that threatens thousands of lives. See here and here.

The discovery of the spying operation comes at a delicate time for Chevron CEO John Watson and the company’s star General Counsel, former Bush Administration official, R. Hewitt Pate. Not only is Chevron facing the large liability in Ecuador for what experts consider to be one of the world’s worst environmental disasters, but also Brazil’s government recently sued the company for $11 billion over an offshore oil spill earlier this year.

Read more from Chevron Toxico: http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2012/0315-chevron-using-espionage-against-lawyers.html

Fracking and oil drilling threatening Mapuche people in Argentina

By Hernán Scandizzo, Latinamerica Press

Members of the Mapuche community say the Argentine government’s aggressive push to increase energy supplies by allowing oil companies to explore in their lands will cause irreversible environmental and social damage.

According to Argentina´s Energy Secretariat, close to 87 percent of Argentina’s energy is generated from fossil fuels. The government agency said that in 1988 Argentina had enough gas supplies for 36 years. But by 2009, this outlook was slashed to seven years. Oil supplies fell from 14 to nine in the same period.

Additionally, starting in 2003, when the economy was stabilizing after its financial collapse two years earlier, consumption of fossil fuels increased sharply. A report of the US Energy Information Administration said that the use of oil and oil products increased more than 37 percent between 2003 and 2010 in Argentina, while gas consumption increased 23 percent in the same period. To cover its energy needs, Argentina’s fuel imports, mainly of liquefied natural gas, gasoil and fuel oil, increased more than seven times, from US$549 million to US$4.5 billion, according to Argentina’s Economy Ministry.

In December 2010, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, or YPF, owned by the Spanish firm Repsol, announced it found a large shale gas reserve, in Loma de la Lata in the southern Neuquen province, and then it found an even bigger one in the same site.

Now other oil companies, including the US-based Chevron, Exxon and Apache, and the France´s Total, are exploring in Neuquen.

According to the US Department of Energy, Argentina is home to the world’s third-largest potential reserves of unconventional gas, with a potential 774 trillion cubic feet, behind only to China with 1.28 trillion cubic feet and the United States with 862 trillion cubic feet.

There is also hydrocarbon exploration in Rio Negro province. The provincial governments of Mendoza and Chubut are evaluating whether to allow for exploration there, too. The Entre Rios province, which has no history of gas exploration, signed an agreement with Repsol-YPF in 2009 for unconventional hydrocarbon exploration, and established an agreement with Uruguay for cross-border exploration with the state oil company Ancap.

New conflicts emerge

But there are consequences for the indigenous groups who live in the path of the expansion.

“There is no doubt that all of the official announcements about these mega-fields are a direct and clear threat to the life and culture of the affected Mapuche communities,” said Jorge Nahuel, a member of the Xawvnko Area Council of the Neuquen Mapuche Confederation.

Last November, members of the Gelay Ko community in Neuquen blocked work on a gas well on their land that US oil company Apache had been drilling, saying that they were not previously consulted of the project. They demanded that the provincial government create two commissions, one to evaluate the social, cultural and environmental impact, and the other for control and monitoring.

Fracking uses millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and sand at high pressure, to break through rock like shale to free natural gas and oil.

“There is no policy in place to measure the impact of this new technology,” said Nahuel. “That is what the communities are reacting to, in Loma de la Lata and in the central part of the province.”

Oil and gas exploration began 60 years ago, and indigenous residents estimate that there are 200 wells there and they have been demanding an end to the activity in the area for the last decade.

Mapuche community authority Cristina Lincopán of the village, said the government brings water each month in trucks to the area from Zapala, a city 60 kilometers (38 miles), because the water is so contaminated from the oil industry.

She said that community members are suffering from blindness, skin diseases and diarrhea.

“The truth is the company Apache is killing us day after day,” she said.

In September 2001, German consultancy Umweltshutz provided the Kaxipayiñ and Paynemil communities an environmental impact study that found 630,000 cubic meters of soil contaminated with chromium, lead, arsenic, naphtaline and pyrene, as well as other heavy metals in the water above legally accepted levels.

Gabriel Cherqui, a werken, or spokesman from the Kaxipayíñ community, said that since early 2011, they blocked YFP from exploring in the region because local government officials failed to clean up the current environmental damage. In 2002, his community, along with the neighboring Paynemil village filed a lawsuit against Repsol-YPF for social-environmental and cultural damage. Back then the cleanup cost was estimated at US$445 million, and is now at US$1.6 billion, according to Cherqui.

Even though Argentina ratified Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization on indigenous peoples, one of whose main points is the previous consultation of indigenous groups, the state has not ensured this.

Now it is an issue local courts are evaluating. In February, Judge Mario Tommasi in Cutral Có town in Neuquen rejected an injunction request by Petrolera Piedra del Águila to do seismic testing in the Huenctru Trawel Leufú Mapuche community. Meanwhile, in March, the provincial Supreme Court approved an injunction against Chinese company Emprendimientos Mineros for copper exploration in the Mellao Morales community.

James Anaya, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples, who visited Argentina in late 2011, said the country’s institutions need to do more to defend indigenous peoples’ human rights.

In a press conference, he said the government needs to regulate the consultation process before extractive industry projects can receive a green light.

Other encroachments on indigenous lands

According to figures from the Neuquen Observatory on Indigenous Peoples’ Indigenous Rights, there are 59 Mapuche communities in the region, 19 of them affected by the oil industry or on the radar of companies looking to expand exploration.

Five of them – Logko Purrán, Gelay Ko, Antipan, Kaxipayiñ and Paynemil – are home to gas exploitation. Oil is being extracted from Wiñoy Folil, Maliqueo and Marifil; and in 11 others, there are concessions for exploration of either.

Salta, in northern Argentina, is also the scene of conflicts over extractive industry in or near the lands of indigenous peoples. In October and November of 2011, the Wichí Lewetes Kalehi and Lote 6 communities in the municipality of Rivadavia Banda Norte tried to stop seismic testing on their lands and reported being harassed by the company Wicap, which was contracted by the Unión Transitoria de Empresas Maxipetrol, as well as by police.

In the Chubut province, in Patagonia, an exploration/exploitation concession in Ñirihuau Sur, in June 2011, put Mapuche Tehuelche communities on alert. In mid-October, they held a trawun, or parliament, to evaluate the impacts of the industry, in which Neuquen Mapuche also participated.

It was a similar story in Chaco, where the province was divided into 12 blocks, some of them including Wichi, Qom and Moquit lands. In mid-2011, the Servicios Energéticos del Chaco-Empresa del Estado Provincial and Argentina Energy Service, a state-owned company, started exploring for hydrocarbons.

From Gáldu

Ecuador court rejects latest Chevron attempt to evade $18 billion judgement

By Amazon Defense Coalition

With its options dwindling and the mistakes of its legal team mounting, Chevron has suffered another courtroom setback in its eleventh-hour attempt to block indigenous rainforest communities from enforcing their $18 billion judgment against the oil giant´s assets around the world.

A three-judge appellate panel in Ecuador on Friday ruled  that a Chevron request for a special bond waiver had no basis in Ecuadorian law, thereby paving the way for the commencement of enforcement actions. Chevron has stripped its assets from Ecuador, forcing the rainforest communities to consider standard judgment collection lawsuits against the oil giant in other countries.

“We intend to do everything in our power to ensure Chevron’s management team meets the company’s legal obligations and pays the full amount of the judgment,” said Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer for the 30,000 Ecuadorians who initiated the lawsuit against the oil giant in U.S. federal court in 1993.

“Chevron broke the rainforest of Ecuador,” said Fajardo. “Now it must fix it.”

Once the judgment against Chevron was affirmed by the same Ecuador appellate panel in early January, the oil giant was obligated to request the bond pending an extraordinary final appeal to the nation’s highest court. Payment of such a bond was the only way under Ecuadorian law to temporarily suspend enforcement of the judgment, but Chevron’s legal team blundered by never asking for it, said Fajardo.

Instead of requesting the bond — which easily could have been paid given Chevron’s annual revenues of $240 billion — Chevron requested an unprecedented waiver of the bond requirement.  After Chevron sought the waiver, the rainforest communities charged the oil giant was seeking “special treatment” not available to any other litigant in Ecuador.

The court, in a four-page decision, said seeking a bond “is the only established legal mechanism to give litigants in Ecuador the opportunity to suspend execution of a judgment.”  In reference to Chevron, it added:  “The losing party decided not to exercise this right.”

Separately, the court rejected an “order” issued Thursday from a private investment arbitration that Ecuador’s government freeze the 18-year litigation until it can rule on a separate set of Chevron claims that the court system in Ecuador treated it unfairly. See here. The private investment panel has been harshly criticized by jurists for violating international law, and the rainforest communities have said its actions have no bearing on their claims given they are not a party to the proceedings. See here and here.

In a detailed analysis of the international law obligations of Ecuador’s government, the appellate panel said the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights and Ecuador’s Constitution trumped any authority from the investment panel, which was convened by Chevron under the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty.  The rainforest communities recently filed a petition with a noted human rights court to block any order from the secret arbitral panel, whose members — all private lawyers — stand to reap millions of dollars of fees for simply granting jurisdiction over the case.

“No part of this Convention can be interpreted to permit any person (such as Chevron or the Arbitral Panel) to interfere with the enjoyment and exercise of rights and liberties recognized in the Convention, nor can it override other rights and guarantees that are inherent in the rights of all men,” the panel wrote in its decision.

The panel also ruled that international law to protect investors can never override international treaties that protect fundamental human rights of individuals, including the right to life and the right to seek legal redress, both of which are being exercised by the rainforest communities.

“A simple arbitral award … cannot obligate judges to do violence to the human rights of the citizens of the country where it sits,” said the panel.

A representative of the rainforest communities was pleased with the decision, which she said protects the independence of Ecuador’s courts and ensures that a private investor treaty cannot trump the fundamental human rights of ordinary citizens.  The trial was held in Ecuador only after Chevron moved it there from U.S. federal court, promising to abide by any adverse judgment.

“The Ecuador appellate panel spoke in a way that is consistent with both Ecuador’s laws and the country’s international treaty obligations,” said Karen Hinton, the U.S. spokesperson for the rainforest communities.  “It shows that Ecuador’s independent courts will not succumb to Chevron’s political pressure nor its request for special treatment.”

“After 18 years of dealing with Chevron’s bad faith and abusive litigation tactics, the rainforest communities have a final and enforceable judgment,” she added.

The Ecuador appellate court did grant Chevron’s request for an extraordinary appeal to the National Court of Justice, a process that likely will take one to two years to conclude.

The appellate ruling comes at a time when Chevron officials are furiously trying to cut a side deal with Ecuador’s government to illegally quash the environmental case, said Fajardo.  The company apparently offered $1 billion to the government to end-run the legal process, an act that could expose Chevron to criminal liability under various anti-bribery statutes in the United States and other countries, he added.

The Ecuador trial court in February 2011 found overwhelming scientific evidence that Chevron deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways when it operated in Ecuador under the Texaco brand from 1964 to 1992.  The dumping decimated indigenous groups and caused an outbreak of cancer that could lead to thousands of deaths in the coming years, according to evidence before the court. See here and here.

A video that tells the story of the environmental disaster and of Chevron’s fraudulent cover-up can be seen here.

The amount of damages set by the Ecuador court is modest compared to the potential liability of BP in the much smaller Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, said Hinton.  BP already has committed $20 billion in compensation for the Gulf spill, an amount that does not include an estimated $60 to $80 billion in additional liability from civil lawsuits now pending in U.S. federal courts.

With its options dwindling and the mistakes of its legal team mounting, Chevron has suffered another courtroom setback in its eleventh-hour attempt to block indigenous rainforest communities from enforcing their $18 billion judgment against the oil giant´s assets around the world.

A three-judge appellate panel in Ecuador on Friday ruled  that a Chevron request for a special bond waiver had no basis in Ecuadorian law, thereby paving the way for the commencement of enforcement actions. Chevron has stripped its assets from Ecuador, forcing the rainforest communities to consider standard judgment collection lawsuits against the oil giant in other countries.

“We intend to do everything in our power to ensure Chevron’s management team meets the company’s legal obligations and pays the full amount of the judgment,” said Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer for the 30,000 Ecuadorians who initiated the lawsuit against the oil giant in U.S. federal court in 1993.

“Chevron broke the rainforest of Ecuador,” said Fajardo. “Now it must fix it.”

From Gáldu

Bulgarian government imposes ban on fracking

By Mirel Bran, Guardian Weekly

Shukri Hussein was only 23 when he first bought some land, with a friend, to start a farm at Praventsi, a village close to Novi Pazar, in north-east Bulgaria. Ten years later the biology graduate heads a 110-hectare organic farm with a workforce of 35.

He was pleased with what he had achieved and had no intention of letting anyone spoil his dream. At the beginning of January he joined thousands of others to protest against plans to explore the huge shale-gas reserves in his region. Their efforts were crowned with success. In June last year the Bulgarian government had granted a permit to the US firm Chevron to prospect across 4,400 sq km around Novi Pazar.

But in January parliament withdraw the permit issued to Chevron, and also decided to ban exploration of shale-gas reserves using the controversial hydraulic-fracturing (fracking) technique.

MPs cited as a precedent a French ban enacted last July, as Bulgaria became only the second state to ban the procedure.

The government had hoped that the new energy source would reduce the nation’s almost complete dependence on imported Russian gas, supplied by Gazprom. Bulgarian shale-gas reserves are estimated to amount to at least 300bn cubic metres, according to the economy and energy ministry.

“To begin with everyone was really enthusiastic,” says Hussein. “We thought we’d get rich overnight. But when I realised the hazards this technology entails I was very concerned. I’ve worked hard for the past 10 years to build up the farm. If they start drilling for shale gas I’ll lose everything.”

Bulgaria’s reserves are several thousands of metres deep. Injecting water, sand and chemicals under high pressure to fracture the bedrock and release the gas involves a serious risk of groundwater contamination.

The risk is particularly serious in the Novi Pazar area, due to its particular geology. But looking further afield, fracking could affect the whole of the north-eastern Dobrudja region. “We were promised lots of jobs and other miracles,” says Vessko Dimov, a dental surgeon from Novi Pazar who launched the anti-fracking protest movement. “But when we woke up to the hazards involved we decided to oppose the project.”A petition collected 15,000 signatures in a month and, much to the protesters’ surprise, several councils in the area decided to oppose fracking.

The campaign spread to Veliki Preslaz, a small town about 40km southeast of Novi Pazar. This historic stronghold is a tourist attraction and feared that trade might suffer.

From 893 to 972 the town was the Bulgarian empire’s second capital and the ruins of the old citadel are testimony to its past splendour. “The travel trade is vital for our town,” says the leader of the local council Aleksandar Gorchev, elected three months ago. “Shale-gas exploitation is a real danger for us. Everyone would be OK if this technology did not pose any problems, but that’s not the case.”

In mid-January the anti-fracking demonstrations spread to the capital Sofia and a dozen other towns across Bulgaria. “I have to admit that at first, I didn’t believe we could do it,” says Hussein. “It’s a big victory for us. In Dubai, they spend a fortune to make the desert inhabitable, whereas here in Europe we have everything we need. We don’t want to turn it into a desert.”

From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/14/bulgaria-bans-shale-gas-exploration

Video: The True Story of Chevron’s Ecuador Disaster

Over three decades of oil drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chevron dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the rainforest, leaving local people suffering a wave of cancers, miscarriages and birth defects. Now, with the support of an international campaign for justice, the communities affected by Chevron’s negligence are holding one of the world’s largest oil companies to account.

From Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/the-true-story-of-chevrons-ecuador-disaster/