FICTION:
“O’Reilly claimed that Texaco made ‘only’ $500 million from its Ecuador operations. However, hard data suggest Texaco had profits upwards of $30 billion, with the lower number the amount booked to the company’s fourth-tier Ecuadorian subsidiary.” – Amazon Defense Coalition Press Release, June 16, 2009
FACT:
The Amazon Defense Coalition’s numbers are demonstrably incorrect. From 1970-1992, the total company earnings for all of Texaco’s world-wide operations totaled $22.9 billion. It is a ludicrous stretch of the truth to say that Texaco made $30 billion in profits from its Ecuador operations.
In reality, Texpet (Texaco subsidiary in Ecuador) was a minority partner in a consortium with Petroecuador, the government’s state-run oil company. While approximately $28 billion in revenue was generated by the consortium between 1972 and 1992, more than $25 billion of that went to the Government of Ecuador in the form of royalties, income taxes , direct participation (through Petroecuador) and market subsidies. Texaco received a small fraction of the profits, or $490 million. Ecuador’s Central Bank has validated this.
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