by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 22, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation
By Elias Cabrera / Inter Press Service & Corpwatch
A thick fog flows over the eastern range of the Colombian Andes. Here and there, the constant wind lifts the clouds to reveal lagoons, cloud forests, and páramo, an Andean alpine ecosystem known as a “mountaintop sponge” for its massive water-holding capacity.
Descending lower into the Upper Magdalena Valley, about 400 kilometres southwest of Bogotá, rural communities farm a wide variety of fruit and vegetable crops, and raise animals that not only sustain families, but help feed Colombia’s major cities.
In the municipal districts of Gigante and Garzón in the department (province) of Huila, the bucolic setting is interrupted by the platforms of several oil wells belonging to Emerald Energy PLC.
Emerald Energy, founded in London in 1996, was awarded its first exploration permit for the Matambo Bloc in Gigante. (Governments typically auction off oil exploration rights on specific parcels of land known as blocks or blocs.)
On Aug. 9, 2011, the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development issued Environmental License 1609 to Emerald Energy, allowing it to install five new platforms and three oil wells in the VSM 32 Bloc, adjacent and uphill of the Matambo Bloc.
Four months after the permit was authorised, campesinos opposing the project gathered in the farming village of Zuluaga.
“I believe we are all united here because of the Emerald’s crude behaviour within our region,” said Luis Jorge Sanchez Garcia, Huila’s former governor. “It is vital that we unite to protect our natural resources from oil development, (and) in particular protect our water. If some disaster happens, it will not affect just the countryside where the operations are; it will affect our entire region.”
“Emerald Energy is destroying the land and water,” Armando Acuña, a municipal council member from Garzón, told CorpWatch. “Their exploration, with underground explosions is causing landslides and the ground to sink, homes, and crops are being destroyed and we are losing our water.”
Communities defend Matambo
Unique to the Americas, páramo are mostly found in the Andes Mountains, with more than 60 percent occurring in Colombia. The vegetation, a unique mixture of lichens, mosses, algae and grasses, has incredible water retention capacity, birthing major rivers such as the Orinoco, Magdalena and Amazon.
The Matambo Bloc, which sits below the páramo in the Magdalena Valley, gets its name from a mountain in the shape of the face of a giant who, according to local legend, will one day arise from the earth.
Since the Matambo Bloc was opened, the region encompassed by the operations has seen a steady deterioration of its land and water, according to the Intersectorial Association of Gigante & Garzón (AISEG).
In 2000, two years after the Gigante 1 well was drilled to 4,815 metres, “there was an explosion that resulted in a fire that burned for 25 days with a flame that was about 30 meters high, shutting down operations,” Jorge Enrique Alvarado, a municipal council member, told CorpWatch.
“This whole area had a dense hazy cloud over it during that whole month and the area nearby had all sorts of burnt oil and ash accumulated on their crops, cattle and fish ponds.”
In early January, the communities affected by Emerald Energy attempted to stop Emerald’s expansion.
“As of November 2011 we have been blocking the entrance to all operations in VSM 32 Bloc, and do not intend to allow any machinery to enter,” said Alberto Calderon, a member of Intersectorial Association of Gigante & Garzón (AISEG), at a public roundtable that followed the blockade.
The middle-aged farmer lives with his wife, two children and some cows and chickens on a small, self-sufficient farm that produces coffee, avocados, onions, and cacao. His land borders Emerald’s oil well Iskana 1.
“Nothing they have brought us has helped us,” he said of Emerald. “Our rivers are drying. They foment divisions within the community, and our youth do not want to work the land after they have worked for the company.”
Read more from Inter Press Service: https://web.archive.org/web/20120328214541/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=107155
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 21, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation
From Occupy the Machine
In Honor of Struggles Against the Extraction Industry Everywhere
In Memory of the Workers Whose Lives Were Taken By BP Two Years Ago,
Join Us In Saying:
“CLEAN AIR AND WATER FOR ALL”
“TAKE BACK EARTH DAY!”
LET’S SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS AND BLOCKADE AN OIL REFINERY!
Download this Call in pamphlet form to distribute
What: A festival of resistance and alternatives to the fossil fuel economy, in the shadow of the Houston Valero refinery, culminating in a refinery blockade.
When: April 19th – 24th
Where: Hartmann Park, Manchester Neighborhood, Houston, TX
Why: The Alberta Tar Sands project is uprooting and poisoning Indigenous people in Canada while destroying the ancient boreal forests that are their home. The huge amount of carbon released will seriously worsen global climate change. The Keystone XL Pipeline will take oil from one of the most ecologically devastating projects on the face of the planet to Houston.
In Houston it will be refined by Valero and other companies. These refineries are surrounded by working-class neighborhoods throughout the Gulf, bringing cancer-causing toxins directly into their backyards. The majority of the Tar Sands oil processed in these refineries will be shipped overseas, ensuring that North American oil workers and those whose rights and lives have been uprooted by these companies won’t even see any long-term benefit for themselves.
Meanwhile, two years after the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and devastated the communities of the Gulf, BP has had a record year of profits. BP has escaped justice yet again in its recent legal victory against the shrimpers and fishermen who they’ve put out of work and the families of the workers who died under their watch.
We invite those who oppose the Tar Sands Project and who want clean air, water and soil for all to come down to Houston for a festival of resistance and alternatives to the fossil fuel economy. Let’s continue to build the power of our communities, amplify the voices of those most affected by companies like Valero, and join together in nonviolent direct action to blockade a refinery.
(more…)
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 22, 2012 | ANALYSIS, Mining & Drilling
By Dahr Jamail, Al Jazeera
Oil touches nearly every single aspect of the lives of those in the industrialised world. Most of our food, clothing, electronics, hygiene products and transportation simply would not exist without this resource.
There is a reason why oil giants such as ExxonMobile, BP, Total and Royal Dutch Shell, year in and year out, generate more profit than most other companies on the planet.
Our current global economy is based on continual growth, and that growth depends on cheap energy.
“Fossil fuels are roughly 84 per cent of what we use, and oil is 35 per cent of the world’s primary consumption energy,” says David Hughes, a geoscientist who studied Canada’s energy resources for nearly four decades.
Given that oil plays such a critical role in the world’s economy, one would deduce it would be important to know how much is left. Otherwise, the world’s stock markets would be exposed to fossil fuels, which would pose a grave risk to investors facing down a so-called carbon bubble, which could potentially dwarf the housing bubble and current debt crisis.
But acquiring accurate figures on the oil reserves of many of the member states of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is currently impossible, as this remains one of their most highly guarded state secrets.
OPEC, which currently has 12 member countries, established a quota system 25 years ago, so that the size of a country’s oil production quota was based on the size of its reserves.
This caused most Gulf countries to announce that their reserves were much larger than previously, and other OPEC members followed suit, according to Tom Whipple, an energy expert and former CIA analyst.
“Most outside observers believe that the ‘official’ reserves of OPEC members are way overstated,” Whipple, who is also a Post Carbon Institute fellow, told Al Jazeera. “Remember the last increase was in response to the OPEC quota agreement which allowed members to sell oil in proportion to their reserves – the bigger your reserves, the bigger your quota.”
“There have been many scandals over the years from people overstating reserves to make them look richer and more important than they are,” added Whipple.
“The biggest fuss I can recall was in Kuwait about five years ago, when somebody leaked a secret government study that said Kuwait’s reserves were less than half what they had been saying. After much fuss, the government made the whole issue even more secret and refused to answer further questions about the report.”
Oil giant BP produces an annual statistical review containing a spreadsheet that has reported world oil reserves back to 1980.
“I’ve tracked that review for the world and for specific OPEC countries,” geoscientist Hughes told Al Jazeera. “Six countries account for more than 80 per cent of OPEC oil; Saudi [Arabia], Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela, and all six of them jacked up their reserves by nearly 100 per cent between 1984 and 1988.”
According to Hughes, this occurred at roughly the same time these countries changed how they set their production quotas.
“Since then, using Saudi [Arabia] as an example, their reported reserves have been flatlined since 1988, so they’ve not changed their reserves at all, but they produced 96 billion barrels of oil between 1980 and 2010.”
Both Hughes and Whipple, along with other energy experts, believe several OPEC countries are intentionally underreporting their reserves – a situation that will, sooner or later, lead to an economic crash.
State secrets
According to OPEC, “more than 80 per cent of the world’s proven oil reserves are located in OPEC member countries, with the bulk of OPEC oil reserves in the Middle East, amounting to 65 per cent of the OPEC total”.
The group’s website states:
“According to current estimates, OPEC member countries have made significant additions to their oil reserves in recent years … As a result, OPEC’s proven oil reserves currently stand at well above 1,190 billion barrels.”
According to OPEC, its member countries have added 347.2 billion barrels to their total proven crude oil reserves.
OPEC claims to maintain the ability to meet forecasted demand growth “for decades to come” and estimates their “ultimately recoverable reserves (URR)” have increased over time due to technological advances, enhanced recovery methods and new reservoir development.
But according to Hughes, key OPEC oil producers such as Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, and Iran have all likely hit their production peaks, and have been producing at the same levels ever since.
“Iraq[‘s production] is nearly flatline since 1988, and its peak production year was 1979. Kuwait has largely flatlined since 1988 and its peak production was 1972,” he said.
Hughes said that UAE had largely maintained the same level of production since 1988, while having a recent peak in 2006. Iran had a flat production level from 1988 to 2000, with just a slight increase in their reserves, albeit having reached peak production in 1974.
Venezuela, in contrast, nearly doubled its reserves in 2008, and increased them further in 2009, but, like the aforementioned, reached a production peak in 1970 that has not been attained since.
Hence, the leading OPEC countries, which account for two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves, have all passed their peak production points.
“Even Saudi [Arabia] peaked in 2005,” added Hughes, “What that tells you is their rate of production is a lot more important than what they report as their reserves. How can you produce nearly 100bn barrels, like Saudi, and your reserves don’t change at all?”
Hughes then added what he feels is the bottom-line.
“It’s likely those reserves are far lower than they are reporting.”
Dr Ali Samsam Bahktiari, a former official at the National Iranian Oil Company, said in 2006 – just a year before his death – that all the countries in the Middle East vastly overestimated or overstated their reserves.
Complicating matters, demand for oil is forecast to increase dramatically in coming decades.
Dr Fatih Birol, Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency, told The Independent on August 3, 2009:
“Even if demand remained steady, the world would have to find the equivalent of four Saudi Arabias to maintain production, and six Saudi Arabias if it is to keep up with the expected increase in demand between now and 2030. It’s a big challenge in terms of the geology, in terms of the investment and in terms of the geopolitics “
Furthermore, Whipple believes OPEC quotas are no longer relevant.
“Everybody just produces as much oil as they can or [that] is prudent to extract without damaging their oil fields,” he said. “The Saudi and Iranian fields are getting really old and should start to decline in the next decade. The Saudis just announced that they will not be increasing their capacity, except for natural gas. A lot of people are starting to lump in their natural gas production along with their conventional oil. It is called ‘barrels of oil equivalent’. Exxon has been doing this for years, as they pretend their output is increasing.”
Like Whipple, Hughes believes the true oil reserve totals for many OPEC members “are state secrets”.
The mirage of unconventional oil
OPEC also claims: “Technology continues to blur the distinction between conventional and non-conventional oil, of which there is also abundance, as well as with other fossil fuels. We expect the world’s URR [ultimately recoverable resources] to continue to increase in the future. Therefore, the real issue is not reserve availability, but timely deliverability.”
BP refers to URR as “an estimate of the total amount of oil that will ever be recovered and produced”, hence the Canadian tar sands are included.
The tar sands have become infamous due to how dirty the oil is and how energy-intensive it is to extract, along with the massive environmental devastation required in the process of extraction.
Scientific and environmental critics of tar sand extraction also argue that oil companies’ glowing forecasts of how much oil is there, along with how long it will take to extract are fantastic, in a literal sense of the term.
Hughes, whose expertise includes 32 years with the Geological Survey of Canada as both a scientist and research manager, calls the forecasts “exuberant”.
“They were at 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2010. Industry has tripled the forecasts in 25 years, which would put them at about 4.5mbpd. It’s taken 40 years to get the tar sands to 1.5 million bpd and the surface scar is incredible. I can’t imagine what that would look like if you tripled it.”
Hughes explained the government of Alberta reports 143bn barrels of oil, but “90 per cent of those are too deep to be surface minable. Huge energy inputs are required to get to that. So energy return on investment is going to go down a lot as the tar sands progress. I’ll believe they triple it when I see it … frankly I don’t think it’s possible. This is industry hype they are talking to their shareholders.”
The oil in the tar sands also requires time-consuming construction of more infrastructure to support its extraction and delivery, which, along with the aforementioned factors, lead Hughes to believe the tar sands “can’t be ramped up enough to offset declines of conventional oil”.
Read more from Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/201222051514575294.html
Photo by Akil Imran on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 21, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling, Toxification
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
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 21, 2012 | Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling, Toxification
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
