The long pending case of Ecuadorian Indigenous Peoples and campesinos against U.S. oil company ChevronTexaco has made its way through the U.S. court system and is now to be tried in Ecuador. Prosecuting attorneys are charging the oil company with dumping billions of gallons of toxic materials into unlined pits and rivers throughout the company’s twenty years of operations in Ecuador. The decision for this case to be tried in Ecuador has the potential for setting a new precedent for U.S.-based multinational corporations operating in developing countries. “This case has the potential to establish a new accountability for U.S. oil companies that think they can operate abroad with out adhering to responsible environmental practices,” says Cristobal Bonifaz, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs. “…The United States court has leveled the playing field by ruling that a small court in a remote town of Ecuador has the same power over $99 billion Multinational Corporation as a federal court in Manhattan.” Further, this is one of the first environmental cases where a U.S. company will be tried by the court of a foreign country for acts done on that country’s land and the judgment will be enforced by U.S. courts.
Recently, Ecuadorian rainforest leaders traveled from the Amazon jungle to the city of San Ramon to demand an audience with the C.E.O. of ChevronTexaco, David O’Reilly in hopes of pushing this case forward by engaging in an open dialogue and creating new solutions. Their request for a meeting has thus far been firmly denied. While O’Reilly has remained unresponsive, the Ecuadorian leaders have received a great amount of support from the people of San Ramon, including backing from Mayor H. Abram Wilson and the entire city council. Residents of the area have agreed to conduct fact-finding missions to question ChevronTexaco’s assertions that there has been no lasting environmental impact from its former operations in Ecuador against their own firsthand experience of the allegedly contaminated sites. In addition, other support groups have formed to assist the Ecuadorians in their efforts to convince O’Reilly to meet.
As the Ecuadorian leaders gathered support in San Ramon, the long pending, $1 billion lawsuit made its way from the U.S. courts to Ecuador’s judicial system. On May 14th, the Superior Justice Court of the Ecuadorian city of Nueva Loja accepted the case of indigenous peoples and campesinos against ChevronTexaco. Over 30,000 Ecuadorians of the northeastern provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana have been fighting this lawsuit for over ten years. First filed as a class-action lawsuit against Texaco in U.S. federal court in 1993, the case was the first environmental lawsuit to be filed by foreign plaintiffs in the U.S. accusing a U.S. corporation of causing environmental damage abroad.
According to prosecutors, during its two decades of operations in Ecuador, Texaco spilled 16 million gallons of crud, 20 billion gallons of contaminated water, dumped 4.3 million gallons per day of toxic oil wastewater into wetlands, pits, and rivers, and left approximately 350 open waste pits filled with poisonous heavy metals and carcinogenic compounds. The total wastewater dumped into Ecuador’s rainforest totals more than 18.5 billion gallons. Although studies are still ongoing, samples from various open waste pits have found extremely toxic chemicals including Benzene, Arsenic Lead, Mercury and Cadmium.
According to ChevronTexaco, the allegations against them are completely unfounded. The company asserts that in 1964, when it first entered Ecuador, the environmental regulations adhered to today were virtually non-existent anywhere in the world and that they complied with the international practices of the time. Further, ChevronTexaco claims that all operations it conducted in Ecuador were regulated and approved by the government of Ecuador, including the $40 million clean-up project it sponsored. The company says that environmental audits of the region show that there is no lasting damage to the environment that was caused by its operations.
These actions, prosecutors say, have not only caused irreparable destruction to the environment, but also have contaminated drinking water, and caused an increase in various cancers, miscarriages and respiratory difficulties among people of the local communities. Due, in part, to the environmental damage caused by ChevronTexaco, five indigenous groups are on the verge of extinction in the area where the company operated: the Cofan, Secoya, Siona, Huaorani, and Quichua. Prosecutors in this case say these violations go against the International Labor Organization Convention 169 as well as the Ecuadorian Constitution which states that the collective rights of indigenous communities must be respected and that the communities must be consulted when they could be affected by oil exploration or mining.
