Saturday, February 27th 2010
Indigenous representatives and leaders issued a call for an “uprising” to protest the Ecuadorian government’s development policies and press demands for a pluri-national state.
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Friday, February 26th 2010
The powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, or CONAIE, announced on Friday the rupture of the dialogue with the government of President Rafael Correa and said that it will call for protests and demonstrations.
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Thursday, February 25th 2010
The Ministry of Non-Renewable Natural Resources revealed that private oil firms operating in Ecuador will invest $417 million in 2010, representing almost double the $212 million spent in the sector last year.
Thursday, February 25th 2010
Private oil companies operating in Ecuador plan to invest more than $417 million in 2010, nearly double last year’s outlay, the Non-Renewable Natural Resources Ministry said Wednesday.
Thursday, February 25th 2010
Private oil companies are expected to invest $417.7 million in their Ecuadorean operations this year, up sharply from $212.1 million in 2009, the government said on a statement on Wednesday.
Tuesday, February 23rd 2010
Organizations representing Ecuador’s indigenous peoples announced the rupture of the dialogue that they had been maintaining with government representatives and said they will await the decisions of the General Assembly of indigenous peoples set for later this week to call protest demonstrations.
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Tuesday, February 23rd 2010
The provincial court of Sucumbios has picked a new judge, Leonardo Ordonez Pina, to preside over the Court.
The new judge will take up the case involving a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against Chevron Corp. (CVX).
Tuesday, February 23rd 2010
The provincial court in Ecuador’s Amazon region that is hearing a $27 billion environmental damages case against Chevron Corp (CVX.N) has changed the judge in charge of the case, court officials said on Monday.
The change was described as an administrative matter not expected to impact the outcome of the case.
Leonardo Ordonez, the newly named president of Sucumbios provincial court, was named to replace outgoing court president Nicolas Zambrano. Local law says the court’s chief judge must hear environmental damages cases in the northern province.
“I see no problem with Ordonez continuing the process,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Pablo Fajardo told Reuters.
“It is an administrative matter, a routine rotation of the presidency of the Sucumbios provincial court,” said Chevron spokesman James Craig. “On the face of it, it should not have any impact on Chevron’s case.”
Zambrano took over the case last year when the previous judge, Juan Nunez, stepped down after he was secretly taped discussing the suit with two mysterious men who recorded the conversation with secret cameras stuck inside a wristwatch and a pen.
Plaintiffs accuse Texaco, which was bought by Chevron in 2001, of polluting the Amazon with faulting drilling practices in the 1970s and 1980s. Chevron denies the accusations.
Ecuador’s leftist leader Rafael Correa has said publicly that he sides with the plaintiffs, sparking charges by Chevron of government interference in the case. The initial ruling is expected by both sides to go against Chevron.
But the company vows to appeal any decision for the plaintiffs, ensuring the case will probably stretch for years more.
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Monday, February 22nd 2010
The faux walls that have supported the fraudulent $27 billion legal case against Chevron in Ecuador came tumbling down this month with the revelation that the “independent court appointed expert” Richard Cabrera stands to gain financially from any judgment against the oil company.
The ‘independent’ expert had hid his conflict of interest from the court–and is now discredited by the fact that he had a vested personal interest in finding Chevron guilty. In any courtroom that follows the rule of law, the entire case against Chevron would be dismissed. But this is Ecuador, where justice is as slippery as the banana republic itself.
Monday, February 22nd 2010
Ecuador’s inclusion on an international list of nations accused of lagging in the fight against money laundering is a hypocritical punishment for its relations with Iran, Ecuador’s president said on Saturday.
“What arrogance! And why? Because we have relations with Iran. That’s it,” Rafael Correa said at his weekly town hall meeting. “This is imperialism in its most base form. … This has nothing to do with the struggle against money laundering.”
Wednesday, February 17th 2010
The Obama administration has made a habit of kowtowing to Latin American leftists. But new information out of Ecuador ought to make the White House finally take a stance against that nation’s anti-American regime.
For years, the radical Ecuadorean government led by President Rafael Correa has been backing a massive and spurious lawsuit, sponsored by American trial lawyers, against the California-based Chevron oil company. In what amounts to a state-enforced shakedown, the plaintiffs seek a whopping $27 billion for purported environmental and health damages, all related to oil projects that Texaco – now owned by Chevron Corp. – stopped operating in Ecuador in 1990. Before it was taken over by left-wingers, the Ecuadorean government in 1998 certified that Texaco had cleaned up its old drilling sites. The new government ignores that certification.
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Wednesday, February 17th 2010
Richard Cabrera, author of a report upon which a 16-year-old $27 billion lawsuit against Chevron Corporation in Ecuador is based, was the subject of a court filing recently in Lago Agrio, Ecuador. It seems that officials at the oil giant based in San Ramon, California, found new “dirt” on the Ecuadoran businessman.
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Friday, February 12th 2010
Earlier in the week it was revealed that the author of a report recommending Chevron pay $27 billion in damages has a conflict of interest that he illegally hid from the court. As it turns out, Richard Cabrera, the report’s author, is the majority owner of an oil field remediation company in Ecuador that stands to gain financially from a judgment against Chevron.
Cabrera has suggested a wholly illegitimate and unsubstantiated damage recommendation against Chevron in excess of $27 billion. Cabrera was not only paid solely by the plaintiffs, but he openly relied on them to staff his effort while seeking to obstruct Chevron’s representatives from even observing his work. In fact, major portions of his submissions to the court are cribbed from the plaintiffs’ own submissions, if not written by them directly. His work product is devoid of scientific content, lacks even the most basic evidentiary support, and assesses monetary relief for alleged environmental damage and health claims he has never even bothered to investigate, inspect, or verify.
In addition to those outlined above, below is a list of other Cabrera Report flaws:
Lack of Causation
Cabrera completely ignored his court-ordered mandate to determine causation and chronology of environmental conditions. Instead, he just arbitrarily assigned liability to Texaco for every instance of alleged environmental impact in the former concession areas. By ignoring chronology and causation, Cabrera even makes Texaco liable for environmental impact caused solely by Petroecuador in the last 20 years.
Failure to Inspect and Falsifying “Evidence”
Cabrera ignored court orders that he must inspect every site, visiting only 48 of 316 wells and one of 19 production stations. Instead, Cabrera reviewed aerial photos to identify pits and used those photos incompetently and dishonestly. For example, Cabrera submitted certain aerial photos with his report and declared that various items in the photos — like trees, tanks and shadows — were pits. He also submitted photos of pits constructed by Petroecuador after 1990, backdated the photos to the 1970s and declared that the pits were constructed earlier by Texaco Petroleum. Cabrera, therefore, fraudulently overstated the number of pits.
Arbitrary Determination of Remediation Scope
With no justification, Cabrera arbitrarily concluded that 80 percent of well pits and 100 percent of production station pits need to be remediated, regardless of past or current remediation efforts. Cabrera then further fabricated and overstated the magnitude of remediation required for each pit, arbitrarily assuming that each pit needs to be remediated to a depth of four meters (13.12 ft) and that an additional area around each pit equal to 50 percent of the pit surface area also needs to be remediated.
Gross Overstatement of Remediation Cost
Cabrera grossly overstated the cost to remediate pits. Though Petroecuador has been remediating pits to Ecuador standards for approximately $85,000 per pit, Cabrera recommends remediation costs of $2.743 billion — over 150 times the Petroecuador budget of $18 million for this work.
For more information on other elements contained within Cabrera’s $27 billion damage report, please use the following hyperlinks.
It is clear the Ecuadoran court handling the lawsuit against Chevron has abandoned the due process guarantees mandated by Ecuadorian law, eliminated the plaintiffs’ burden of proof, and substituted in its place the work of Richard Cabrera. Chevron has consistently argued that it is not getting a fair trial in Ecuador. Evidence presented to the court shows Texaco Petroleum’s remediation was thorough and complete. The Amazon Defense Front has teamed up with the government of Ecuador to try to shift the liability of Petroecuador to Chevron by pressuring the company into an unjust settlement using a biased and improperly influenced court and a partisan and unqualified “independent” analyst.
Thursday, February 11th 2010
New revelation of a conflict of interest for the author of a report recommending that Chevron pay $27 billion in damages in the long-running trial in Ecuador has prompted a deliberately misleading response from the Amazon Defense Front, which is the named financial beneficiary of any judgment in the case.
Cabrera has a previously undisclosed majority ownership interest in a company registered to do business with Petroecuador. Petroecuador is the state owned oil company, chief polluter in the region, and beneficiary of Cabrera’s “findings.” This evidence raises additional, serious questions about Cabrera’s independence and completely undermines the integrity of his report.
Seeing its potential payday at risk, the Amazon Defense Front scrambled to respond via press release. While attempting to sidestep the issue, the Amazon Defense Front does not deny that Cabrera improperly failed to disclose his conflict of interest at the time of his appointment or thereafter. Nor does the Amazon Defense Front deny that had Cabrera’s ownership interest been properly disclosed, it would have been disqualifying. Below is a response to four of the many misleading and inaccurate statements from the Amazon Defense Front press release:
“Cabrera disclosed to the court that he owned a clean-up company before his appointment as Special Master. This fact was properly cited by the court as one of the reasons he was qualified to do the damages assessment.”
This is a yet another of the Amazon Defense Front’s blatant attempts to mislead the public.
Exhibit 4 from the filing contains everything that Cabrera has disclosed. Nowhere does Cabrera disclose the fact that he was a co-founder, general manager, majority stockholder, and legal representative of CAMPET at the time of his appointment as an “independent” technician or during his work for the court. CAMPET is a soil remediation company and preapproved contractor to Petroecuador. Cabrera affirmatively swore to the court that he had no conflicts of interest. This has shown to be untrue by virtue of his financial interests in CAMPET.
The Amazon Defense Front’s statement is intended to misrepresent Cabrera’s disclosure about working for a different remediation company, CONGEMINPA, prior to his appointment. Cabrera disclosed that his work with CONGEMINPA ended in 2003, and Cabrera had also sold all of his stock in GONGEMINMPA in 2003, years before his 2007 appointment in this case. This past connection to a remediation company did not present a conflict of interest at the time of his appointment. The Amazon Defense Front’s statement is meant to create the false impression that Cabrera disclosed his interest in CAMPET, the company he continued to own, manage, and legally represent during his entire tenure as a supposedly “independent” expert in the case. But he did not make any such disclosure. In fact, German Yanez, the judge who appointed Cabrera, told Dow Jones Newswires Feb. 9 he didn’t know about CAMPET or whether the company’s registration as a bid contractor for Petroecuador constituted any conflict of interest.
“All I know is what I saw in his curriculum (vitae),” said Yanez. “If there’s missing information, I don’t know why.”
“Chevron thought so highly of Cabrera’s qualifications that it accepted him as a court-appointed expert in an earlier part of the case and paid his fees as required by court rules.”
This is factually incorrect.
Cabrera was appointed by the court in an earlier phase of the trial, but he performed no work and at no time has Chevron paid Cabrera for anything. On the contrary, the plaintiffs paid Cabrera more than $200,000 for his subsequent work.
Chevron has repeatedly and unwaveringly questioned Cabrera’s qualifications since his original involvement in the case, has opposed his report, and has repeatedly told the court that his damages assessment is without basis, is biased, and was developed with and co-written by the plaintiffs. At no time has Chevron ever “thought highly of Cabrera’s qualifications” to be an expert in this case.
“The fact Cabrera’s company is qualified to bid on clean-up contracts offered by Ecuador’s state-owned oil company is irrelevant. That company, Petroecuador, is not a party to the case against Chevron and would have no role in any eventual cleanup.”
This is factually incorrect.
Petroecuador was the majority partner in the consortium and is responsible for every site in question. Moreover, no remediation work in the oil producing region could occur without Petroecuador’s active involvement, participation, and authorization. Simply put, nothing could happen in Petroecuador’s oil fields, including a remediation ordered by the court, without Petroecuador.
Meanwhile, the government of Ecuador has already acknowledged that it expects to participate in any prospective remediation work. At a September 2009 press conference, Ecuador’s Prosecutor General, Washington Pesantez said, “Although I don’t have the exact figures, 10 percent would go to the plaintiffs if Chevron is found guilty; 90 percent would be delivered to the State for remediation or bio-remediation activities that would serve to correct biologic and chemical mechanisms…”
In addition, “the fact Cabrera’s company is qualified to bid on clean-up contracts offered by” Petroecuador is extremely relevant: — Cabrera’s report attempts at every turn to exonerate Petroecuador for 20 years of sloppy practices. In his report Cabrera exonerates Petroecuador of the current environmental conditions in the region, grossly inflates the scope of remediation and costs of the work, and even calls on the court to award $375 million to upgrade Petroecuador’s infrastructure. Cabrera’s company’s registration to do work for Petroecuador provides the perfect incentive for Cabrera to go to such absurd lengths to lavish benefits on Petroecuador in his report, and the perfect opportunity for Petroecuador to return the favor.
“Cabrera by virtue of his role in the case would be barred from having a role in a future clean-up.”
This statement is inherently contradictory and is made without any factual support. First the Amazon Defense Front says there is no conflict at all, and then it says that Cabrera does indeed have a conflict of interest. His financial stake in remediation explains why Cabrera, on at least ten different occasions, concealed from the court his conflict of interest — a violation of Ecuador law. Accordingly, Cabrera’s report should be rejected and Cabrera’s connection to Petroecuador should be investigated.
Chevron has consistently argued that it is not getting a fair trial in Ecuador. Evidence presented to the court shows Texaco Petroleum’s remediation was thorough and complete. Amazon Defense Front has teamed up with the government of Ecuador to try to shift the liability of Petroecuador to Chevron by pressuring the company into an unjust settlement using a biased and improperly influenced court and a partisan and unqualified “independent” analyst.
Thursday, February 11th 2010
Chevron oil company is being sued in Ecuador for $27 billion. It’s a big number. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Ecuador in 2008 was $54 billion. So $27 billion is 50% of the GDP of the entire country. And the $27 billion claim is sheer fantasy. The damage claim against Chevron is based on a gigantic scam.
Read more »
Wednesday, February 10th 2010
QUITO (Dow Jones)–A court-appointed biologist said in a report that there’s no hydrocarbon contamination in Ecuadorean rivers near where Chevron Corp. (CVX) is being sued for alleged environmental damages.
But the expert said he found high levels of bacterial contamination from fecal matters that could be the source of the local population’s health problems. Heavy metals were also found in local fish – which could come from crude or other sources, court-appointed biologist Jorge Bermeo said.
The document, recently reviewed by Dow Jones Newswires, further muddles the already murky environmental lawsuit, in which plaintiffs from the region sued Texaco for environmental damages allegedly done decades ago that they claim resulted in health problems. Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001, denies the allegations.
Both sides have criticized the report. Plaintiffs dispute the findings, accusing Bermeo of being manipulated by the company’s lawyers. Chevron said that it didn’t interfere with either the expert’s work or with the final report.
“What has been found in fish has direct relation to the oil activity, and yet, the expert is trying to provide a tool to Chevron’s defense,” said Pablo Fajardo, an attorney for the plaintiffs who asked the court to dismiss 50% of the report.
Bermeo said denied the allegation. “No representative of the company has ever pressured me or tried to influence my report,” he said in an interview.
Asked about the heavy metal in fish tissues, Chevron spokesman James Craig said the result is likely a “false positive” that stems from improper sample preparation and analytical methods.
Bermeo said that he used the best technology available.
The report was based on analyses done last September in five of 16 towns that plaintiffs claim were affected by Texaco’s oil operations. Judge Juan Nunez, who formerly oversaw the case, asked Bermeo to assess how much of the pollution in the region’s waterways was caused by the region’s fishing techniques. Around 60% of the population in the Sucumbios and Orellana provinces, where the study took place, are dedicated to agriculture and fishing activities.
“According to the laboratory results, there are not significant quantities of metals in the water to say that there are hydrocarbon contamination problems,” Bermeo said.
The report said that water and aquatic life have been impacted by direct discharge of untreated sewage and by destructive fishing practices that include the use of dynamite, chemicals and poison.
Laboratory analysis of fish tissue found a higher-than-allowed presence of hydrocarbons and heavy metals such as phosphorus, barium, potassium, and lead, among others, according to report.
The hydrocarbons and metals found are the result of being exposed to contaminants of organic and mineral origin, the report said. The metals could come from agriculture, oil and mining activities near the rivers, as well as natural causes, the report said.
It’s unclear whether the findings will weigh in the court’s decision, which is expected for the first half of 2010. In November 2008 the court-appointed geologist Richard Cabrera told the court that Chevron should pay more than $27 billion in compensation for alleged environmental damages. Chevron has repeatedly criticized the report.
Wednesday, February 10th 2010
“Chevron Corp. has stepped up its offensive against a group that says the oil giant poisoned sections of the Amazon rain forest.
After spending months discrediting the political and legal system in Ecuador, where a court is considering a fine against the company, Chevron now claims that a court-appointed expert gave biased testimony in the case.”
Read more »
Wednesday, February 10th 2010
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Ecuador asked a U.S. court to pause international arbitration of a dispute with Chevron Corp. (CVX) while the judge considers the country’s request for a permanent halt to the proceedings.
In a petition for preliminary injunction filed late Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Ecuador’s government said that allowing the international arbitration proceedings to continue would impose an undue burden on the country’s finances.
“It simply makes no sense to force the Republic to expend its public resources to engage in a multi-year, multi-billion dollar arbitration,” the filing said.
The arbitration is tied to a lawsuit taking place in Ecuador in which inhabitants of the country’s Amazon region seek to make Chevron pay $27 billion for environmental damages allegedly caused by Texaco Inc.
San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron inherited the lawsuit when it acquired Texaco in 2001, and denies the allegations.
In September, Chevron requested arbitration under international law, arguing that the Ecuadorean government should be held responsible for any environmental damage and pay any penalties. Chevron says the Ecuadorean government is interfering in the environmental lawsuit, and is violating an agreement releasing the company from environmental claims.
The Ecuadorean government denies any interference and says the release agreement didn’t cover lawsuits filed by third-parties. In December, Ecuador filed a lawsuit at a U.S. District Court in New York asking it to stop the arbitration, saying that it violated a promise made in 1999 by Texaco to the court to accept the ruling of the Ecuadorean courts in the case. Chevron maintains it is not a party to that lawsuit and that in the final ruling there’s no stipulation from the U.S. court that it must comply with the decision of an Ecuadorean court.
A Chevron spokesman said that Ecuador “wouldn’t need to spend anything defending an arbitration if it had lived up to its contractual obligations.”
Tuesday, February 9th 2010
Chevron has revealed new information showing that the author of a report recommending the company pay $27 billion in damages has a conflict of interest that he illegally hid from the court. As it turns out, Richard Cabrera, the report’s author, is the majority owner of an oil field remediation company that stands to gain financially from a judgment against Chevron.
Records from 2003-2008 show that Cabrera is co-founder, general manager, majority stockholder, and legal representative of an oilfield remediation company, CAMPET, which is registered to perform oilfield remediation and other services for Petroecuador. Cabrera failed to disclose these business interests as required by law.
In his report, Cabrera absolves Petroecuador of any responsibility or remediation obligations associated with past or present oil operations. Yet, Petroecuador was the majority owner of the Petroecuador-Texaco Petroleum consortium which operated until mid-1992. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that Petroecuador has spilled millions of gallons of oil since taking over exclusive ownership and operations.
Instead, Cabrera exclusively attributes pollution in the Amazon region of Ecuador to Texaco Petroleum, now owned by Chevron. Cabrera’s report says Chevron, because it acquired Texaco Petroleum in 2001, is solely liable for $27 billion in damages, citing grossly inflated remediation costs while ignoring Petroecuador’s role in oil operations and its well-documented poor environmental performance. These findings make no sense as a matter of Ecuadorian law or common sense, but are consistent with furthering the interests of Petroecuador, as well as Cabrera’s.
Not only did Cabrera hide his financial interests in the remediation company, he affirmatively represented to the court that he did not have any impediment or conflict that would affect his performance as an “independent” court-appointed witness. Moreover, Cabrera knowingly omitted his interest in CAMPET, as well as CAMPET’s status as a registered Petroecuador contractor, in his submissions to the court. Finally, Cabrera further misled the court by accepting his appointment, which required an explicit acknowledgment of his duties to the court as an impartial analyst—something Cabrera could not have done in good faith, given his financial interests.
Due to the remediation company’s relationship with Ecuador’s state-owned oil company, Petroecuador, Chevron has called upon the court to immediately reject the work of Richard Cabrera on the grounds that he knowingly hid his relationship and that he stands to gain from what was supposed to be unbiased work for the court.
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 »