#ChevronExposed
A week after Chevron CEO John "Hell Freezer" Watson received a "Distinguished Citizen" award from the Commonwealth Club, the gods of irony must have felt compelled to present the public with documentation of just how distinguished this man's work is when it comes to running one of the most ruthlessly irresponsible corporations in the world.
They did it in the form of The Chevron Tapes, a treasure trove of Chevron misdeeds and corporate malfeasance shot by the oil giant's own technicians and consultants and sent by a whistleblower to rainforest watchdog group Amazon Watch.
Revealing in their own words to what length this oil giant has gone to cover up its dirty tracks that have caused so much death and misery for indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the company's consultants are caught on tape frustrated by their inability to find soil samples without oil, and then mocking the contamination, in an obvious attempt to pre-game the judicial inspections to defraud the court.
Here, have a look at how it's done The Chevron Way™ if you're a well-paid shill and you're finding extensive contamination in areas your sponsor has claimed to have cleaned up years ago. Wink wink!
"Good news," Dave says with apparent sarcasm. "Petroleum."
"No! No!" responds Rene. "Check it again."
"Well, do you want to smell it? I think it is," Dave says to Rene, as the two men examine a soil core sample.
Rene sniffs the sample and demurs playfully for a moment before conceding, "Okay, it is — it is, it is."
"Because I don't know what this fungus… this is," says Dave.
"Well, you might as well stop them now," puts in Rene. "Stop them. Just, uh — yeah, we're done here… We're trying to find a clean core, and we obviously we didn't go out far enough."
"Nice job, Dave," he continues. "Give you one simple task: Don't find petroleum."
"Who picked the spot, Rene?" Dave replies.
"I'm the customer," says Rene. "I'm always right."
Wow, Dave and Rene, so much for ever finding a legit science job. Then again, you're probably in the Bahamas, sipping Pina Coladas on Chevron's tab for the rest of your lives.
The second part of the video includes interviews with local residents -- ostensibly conducted by Chevrons reps -- about water contamination and health problems that they attribute to oil pollution.
In one of them, a 30-year resident named Merla talks about her cows:
"We've had our cows die there," she says. "Why did the cows die? Because they drank the water where the oil had spilled. Back then, that whole area was full of crude oil. The water there was filthy. They came and covered it up and they just left all of the crude there and it became a swamp. It's pure crude there. In the middle it's a thick ooze and you'd sink right down into it."
"When was this oil spill," asks the interviewer.
"More than 20 years ago," she responds. "But I still remember it, how there was oil over everything. The cows still die there. They came, threw some dirt on top of the crude oil, and there it stayed."
Well, I guess they just kept interviewing until they found some folks that haven't lived there long enough to be directly affected by the environmental havoc wreaked decades ago. Difficult though it would be for anyone who drinks water.
More background on this below the toppled orange oil derrick...
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Chevron (formerly Texaco) demanding justice. Photo: Lou Dematteis
Justice couldn't be any more poetic, seeing that the smoking gun that finally lays bare the moral bankruptcy of this oil-sucking corporate behemoth comes on the heels of an epic backfire, wherein Chevron's legal firm Gibson Dunn claims ownership of this massive cover-up in order to keep the legal team representing the affected indigenous communities from using the videos in court. Well, as Amazon Watch writes, "Chevron is now free to view them on YouTube."
Speaking of legal firms, this story dates back over 20 years and has been a convoluted legal battle between the oil giant's 200+ lawyers and a scrappy independent lawyer named Steven Donziger trying to compensate his Ecuadorean plaintiffs for the unspeakable damage done by the toxic wastewater that was dumped into open-air pits filled with crude oil by one of Chevron's acquisitions, Texaco, starting in the mid-1960s.
The sad part about this whole saga though is that it never even had to come to this. When Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001, it knew exactly what it was buying into. As I wrote in EcoJustice: Coming to Ecuador, with or without Chevron:
In 1964, Texaco (now Chevron), discovered oil in the remote northern region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, known as the "Oriente." Three times the size of Manhattan, this pristine rainforest is home to the indigenous Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Kichwa and Huaorani people whose lives had been largely untouched by modern civilization.
photo: Lou Dematteis
It was the first time that anyone had ever successfully drilled for oil in the Amazon, and the Ecuadorian government assumed that Texaco/Chevron would abide by the same drilling regulations that had been in effect for decades in major US oil producing states like Louisiana, Texas, and California.
But it didn't: To increase its profit margin, the company made deliberate decisions to use substandard technology that less than 30 years later left the region in shambles: In 1992, after leaving behind some 1,000 open toxic waste pits and dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic "formation waters" into the streams and rivers that 30,000 people depend on for drinking, cooking, bathing and fishing, Texaco/Chevron did what seemed most expedient: sneak out the back door without cleaning up its mess.
Chevron was not only well aware of the ongoing
class-action suit against Texaco, but documentation of the ecological disaster its new acquisition had caused was widely available, most notably through photographer Lou Dematteis' book,
Crude Reflections - Oil, Ruin and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest. In the introduction to his book, he writes about his shock upon first arriving on the scene:
I visited old Texaco (now Chevron) oil well sites and saw toxic wastewater being dumped into open-air pits filled with crude oil that looked like infected sores on the floor of the rainforest. This was one of the results of Texaco's decision to dump oil waste into the environment instead of re-injecting it back into the earth. Even though Texaco left Ecuador in 1992, the dumping continued at its old wells and facilities. To make matters worse, many pits were set on fire in order to burn away the waste crude, a practice started by Texaco. The scene looked like something out of Dante's Inferno.
Oil waste pit fire in Shushufindi in 1993. Photo: Lou Dematteis
A worker siphons crude oil from a waste pit left by Texaco near Dureno in 1993. This oil was later used to spread on roads in the area to keep the dust down. Photo: Lou Dematteis
If Chevron were the least bit interested in being a responsible corporate member of the international community, it could have owned up to its debt by acquisition and negotiated a settlement with the affected communities. It would not only have been the right thing to do, but it would have saved the company billions of dollars in legal fees and created the kind of image that would live up to its
advertising. But instead — and perhaps like
the scorpion who just can't help itself — it doubled down, big time.
As the company's General Counsel Charles James said in a 2008 speech to UC Berkeley law students:
"We will fight until hell freezes over -- and then skate it out on the ice."
and CEO Watson reiterated at the company's 2013 shareholder meeting:
"We are resisting until Hell freezes over. We don't intend to pay criminals who seek to defraud your company."
At that same meeting, of course, after lecturing Servio Curipoma, a community representative from the indigenous Ecuadorian communities about how he was being manipulated by greedy lawyers, the billionaire CEO refused to drink from a bottle of "Chevron Water" straight from the source Mr. Curipoma had offered him.
Mr. Curipoma is holding a photo of his deceased mother and a bottle of "Chevron Water" outside Chevron Headquarters in San Ramon, CA. Photo Amazon watch
However, Chevron's calculation that they would be able to use their obscene wealth and endless supply of high-powered lawyers to bully their way out of this is
starting to unravel.
Perhaps the most astounding chapter of this whole story is that Chevron filed a RICO case in NY against communities and their legal team, accusing them of fraud and extortion. But even that is rapidly falling apart for Chevron. New forensic evidence from the presiding judge's computer, which Chevron asked a court to order, backfired. It actually shows the company's claims that the plaintiff's lawyers bribed a judge to "ghostwrite" the Ecuador verdict – are implausible and false.
Armed with this new evidence, the plaintiff's appeal of Chevron's RICO case will be heard April 20th before the Second Circuit in New York. And Canada's Supreme Court should be rendering its decision on the communities' effort to seize Chevron's assets in a matter of weeks. Shareholders should be asking some serious questions about the story they've been told from Chevron senior management over the company's legal and ethical conduct in the Ecuador trial, and the impending liability that just won't go away.
It looks like the chickens are finally coming home to roost. In spite of all the years of legal wrangling in courtrooms across the world, what's important to remember is that this case is not about the legal technicalities that Chevron has spent a fortune on creating and multiplying, but about real people, who deserve justice.
People like Miguel Yumbo from the Kichwa indigenous nation, whose 9-year old son Jairo was born with a deformed hand:
Photo: Lou Dematteis
Miguel Yumbo: I'm a farmer and I grow coffee and cocoa. We get our drinking water from a stream about 100 yards from the house, next to the highway, and we bathe there too. We've seen crude in the water. We push the crude aside, and gather up the clean water underneath to drink.
I couldn't be at the hospital in Coca when Jairo was born because I was working. When he was 8 days old, I went back to the hospital and talked to the doctors. They told me that the petroleum caused his hand to be like that, because we always drank water from an oil-filled stream, and because Texaco used to pass by our house spraying crude on the dirt highway.
From Crude Reflections
Or Angel Toala, held by his wife Luz Maria Marin, the day before he died of stomach cancer in his home in Shushufindi.
Photo: Lou Dematteis
Luz Maria Marin: There's a [Texaco] pumping station near our house and a [Texaco] oil well 200 yards from our house, and downstream is a lake where the crude oil they dumped gathers. We never let the animals drink this water. A lot of times we found dead fish in it. Our coffee plants there turned yellow and died.
We got our drinking water from the rain, and, when it didn't rain, from the stream. It had a funny taste and sometimes you could see oil floating on top. We bathed there and washed our clothes there. We knew the water was bad for our health, but what could we do? There wasn't water anywhere else.
I don't think the oil company worried if they contaminated the water. We farmers didn't realize the water was contaminated, and certainly it was not in the oil company's interest to tell us that.
About three years ago, my husband started having stomach pains, slight pains when he ate. (Crying) About a year ago he started losing weight. Then his back began hurting, and his muscles. He felt tired. At the end, he couldn't take the sun. He was so tired; he didn't have any energy. In Quito he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. We took him to the Eugenio Espejo Hospital but the doctors said it was too late, nothing could be done. The last three months before he died, he couldn't do anything. He just lay in the hammock.
From Crude Reflections
For ultimately, when indigenous leaders like Humberto Piaguaje (C) and Guillermo Grefa (L) make the long journeys to American courts or Chevron shareholders meetings, they're not asking for retribution or to enrich themselves, they're asking for justice and human decency.
photo: Lou Dematteis
"Our struggle is not for money. We want you to repair the damage so our children do not have to continue suffering.”
However, in the absence of human decency, serving justice to Chevron in the form of the Canadian Supreme Court seizing the company's assets will be a good start.
Please tweet with hashtag #ChevronExposed
@Chevron secret videos reveal it knew toxic contamination was never cleaned up & would harm communities. #ChevronExposed
#ChevronExposed proof @Chevron knew Ecuador contaminated, ppl dying & not only lied but accused Ecuadorians of fraud!
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Fri Apr 10, 2015 at 12:38 PM PT: JUST RELEASED: Photographs taken by the Louis Berger Group, a New Jersey-based environmental engineering firm, that recently tested for contamination at over 60 pits on behalf of the Government of Ecuador. LBG also finds massive contamination at “remediated” pits and concludes that the contamination they and the Ecuador court found only “scratch(es) the surface” of contamination, caused by Texaco and Texaco alone.