To Harm Big Oil, Lefty Unions Align With Human Rights Abusers – Real Clear Markets

You don’t often hear Canada and Ecuador mentioned in the same breath, but the left’s fight to smear big corporations over alleged abuses sometimes makes strange bedfellows. It started when Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001. Texaco had been previously active in Ecuador and worked with the Ecuadorian government to mitigate and clean up its drilling sites, at a cost of $40 million to Texaco. Texaco fulfilled this clean-up to the Ecuadorian government’s satisfaction and was legally released from any liability. Years later and after the Chevron acquisition, however, Ecuador colluded with environmental activists to coordinate a $19 billion (later reduced to $9 billion) judgment against Chevron for alleged contamination by Texaco of the Ecuadorian jungle. Ecuador and the radical environmental group Amazon Watch teamed up with American lawyer Steven Donziger, whose shady tactics, combined with a lack of judicial independence in Ecuador, resulted in a multi-billion dollar judgement against Chevron. Interestingly, there was never a lawsuit against or criticisms of PetroEcuador, the nationalized oil company that partnered with Texaco in Ecuador, taking over operations in the early 90’s and which is responsible for well over 1,000 spills in the region since 2000. Read more>>