Friday, October 30th 2009
“PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Ladies and gentlemen, media representatives, I would like to say a few words about our talks with the President of Ecuador, Mr Rafael Correa.”
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Friday, October 30th 2009
“Ecuador seeks Russian financial and technical support to overhaul its energy industry and for road-building and hydropower projects, President Rafael Correa said in Moscow on Thursday.”
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Friday, October 30th 2009
“The Ecuadorian government said Thursday in justifying its decision to bypass patents and facilitate the production of lower-cost versions of certain medicines that health “takes precedence” over commercial interests.”
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Friday, October 30th 2009
“President Dmitry A. Medvedev yesterday called new arms and energy deals between Russia and Ecuador just a beginning as Moscow strives to deepen ties in Latin America.”
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Friday, October 30th 2009
“Ecuador is pushing for closer cooperation with Moscow, putting Russian-Latin American relations under the spotlight.”
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Friday, October 30th 2009
“Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has hailed arms and energy deals with Ecuador as just a beginning as Moscow continues it drive to deepen ties in South America.”
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Friday, October 30th 2009
“A team of lawyers will represent Ecuador in Paris in next week’s hearing in the arbitration case filed against the Andean country by U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY).”
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Thursday, October 29th 2009
“Ecuador may ask Russia for a loan and sign a dozen contracts during Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s first official visit to Moscow on Thursday.”
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Thursday, October 29th 2009
“Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Ecuadoran counterpart Rafael Correa pledged Thursday to ramp up cooperation in energy and defence as the Kremlin seeks to revive Soviet-era ties with Latin America..”
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Thursday, October 29th 2009
“Foreign pharmaceutical companies accepted on Wednesday Ecuador’s decision to bypass patents in order to produce less expensive generic versions of some patented drugs.”
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Thursday, October 29th 2009
“Foreign pharmaceutical firms including Pfizer agreed Wednesday to accept Ecuador’s decision to bypass patents on 2,000 drugs in order to produce them locally or buy cheaper versions elsewhere.”
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Thursday, October 29th 2009
“President Rafael Correa has asked the nation’s lawmakers to terminate investment protection agreements with 13 countries, Linda Machuca, a National Assembly member, said Wednesday.”
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Thursday, October 29th 2009
“The governments of Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica and Venezuela, as well as other members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), signed the Deed of Commitment to create a grand-national company in the iron and steel sector.”
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Thursday, October 29th 2009
An elaborate series of relationships between the Ecuadorian government, U.S. trial lawyers and activist groups show that strong economic and political ties exist in their efforts to put pressure on a small rural courtroom in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, to find Chevron guilty in an environmental lawsuit.
This interactive diagram highlights these relationships and provides an examination of the forces behind the lawsuit. The Web of Influence diagram shows that the legal case against Chevron in Ecuador is a coordinated effort by U.S. trial lawyers and activist NGOs working with the executive branch of the Ecuadorian government to influence the Ecuadorian judiciary to ensure a guilty verdict against Chevron.
Thursday, October 29th 2009
“Karen Hinton, paid Washington, DC based PR representative for the Amazon Defense Coalition, is leveling a new baseless accusation against bloggers who are raising legitimate questions about the organization’s lawsuit against Chevron. Commenting on an article by Carter Wood titled “What 30,000?” Ms. Hinton makes the following remark…”
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Wednesday, October 28th 2009
“Germany has pledged $50 million a year as a contribution to the Yasuni-ITT project, which would see Ecuador compensated for not extracting oil from an Amazonian reserve, Ecuador’s president said Tuesday.”
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Wednesday, October 28th 2009
“Peru Environment Minister Antonio Brack Egg and his Ecuadorian counterpart Marcela Aguiñaga signed an unprecedented environmental cooperation agreement on Wednesday, to favor the joint monitoring and conservation of protected areas and the responsible and sustainable use of natural resources.”
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Wednesday, October 28th 2009
“The directors of CN3-Cablenews, a TV channel taken over by the government in July 2008, canceled “Productive Forum,” Hoy reports. Its anchor said the program ended after three years because the station directors didn’t agree with his editorial line.”
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Wednesday, October 28th 2009
“Ecuador’s oil-product export revenue in August fell 50% to $76 million from the $152 million registered in the same month of 2008, the Central Bank said Tuesday.”
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Wednesday, October 28th 2009
“Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has a Ph.D. in economics, though it may not have prepared him for the recent financial turmoil that beset his coastal country.”
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Tuesday, August 24th 2010
Reuters profiles the Chevron Ecuador case: A run-down court building that also houses the local casino in this Amazon jungle town is the unlikely venue for the largest environmental damages lawsuit ever tried. Read More »Tuesday, August 24th 2010
Reuters also features additional details of the Chevron Ecuador lawsuit: U.S.-based Chevron Corp (CVX.N) faces a $27 billion environmental damages lawsuit in Ecuador, a case that has already dragged on for years and could last many more if it gets bogged down in appeals. Read More »Friday, August 13th 2010
A new article on the Chevron Ecuador lawsuit: The story of Chevron in Ecuador already bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Dole in Nicaragua. A U.S. company persuades a U.S. judge to toss out an alien tort claim on forum non conveniens grounds. U.S. plaintiffs lawyers then seek jackpot damages in a Latin American court (while being lionized in a controversial documentary). The corporation discredits the Latin American court by returning to the U.S. courts and alleging fraud. In Dole's case, a judge in California state court found that some of the plaintiffs lawyers had misled the court. In the Chevron case, it appeared that the actor most clearly discredited was the Ecuadorian judge caught on film discussing damages with an outside party. But last week, as the Litigation Daily previously reported, Chevron's lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher filed a brief asserting that outtakes from the documentary Crude, turned over by the filmmaker in response to a Second Circuit discovery ruling, suggest that the plaintiffs lawyers themselves choreographed an "independent" expert's report recommending up to $27 billion in damages. Last year plaintiffs countered coverage of the judicial bias videotapes by attacking the motives and background of the American who secretly filmed the judge. Explaining the newly released footage will be more difficult. Based on what is known so far about the Crude outtakes, outrage seems appropriate. While the footage raises interesting questions of filmmaking ethics, what matters for the litigation is the apparent evidence of collusion between plaintiffs and court-appointed expert Richard Cabrera. Read More »
Wednesday, September 1st 2010
Discussion of the restrictions that Ecuador President Rafael Correa is placing on the media: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua have passed new media laws—all of them aimed at clipping the wings of privately owned news sources—and the call for “social control of media” is viral among lefty groups. (It was unanimously endorsed, for instance, by participants at an August confab in Argentina of regional leftist parties—which now govern 11 Latin American countries—called the São Paulo Forum.) “The threat to freedom is all around,” says Amaury de Souza, a Brazilian political scientist. “And it’s growing.” Read More »Wednesday, September 1st 2010
This article discusses Ecuador's oil exports and imports of refined crude: Ecuador is one of Latin America’s largest oil exporters, with net oil exports estimated at 305,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2009. Read More »Wednesday, September 1st 2010
Ecuador signs second loan in two months with China: Ecuador and China signed on Tuesday a $1 billion loan deal as the Asian giant is pushing ahead with the policy of securing energy resources in Latin America and Africa. The fresh loan deal, which Ecuador's government signed in Beijing with the China Development Bank, comes just two months after Ecuador and the Export-Import Bank of China signed a $1.7 billion deal for financing a huge hydroelectric project in Ecuador. Read More »