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Currently, ERI's Amazon campaign is focused on leadership training and community organization capacity-building efforts in Peru.
Washington, DC, August 1, 2008 – Mired in controversies over its global human rights and environmental record, Chevron Corporation announced today that second-quarter earnings rose 11 percent to its highest-ever profit. Driven by record oil prices, the company reaped $5.98 billion in earnings in the three month period ending June 30, pushing revenues up to $82.9 billion. Following a report this week that Chevron is using its influence with the Bush Administration and Congress to pressure Ecuador to dismiss a case accusing the oil giant of toxic pollution in the Amazon, critics are calling on Chevron to cease interfering in the foreign affairs of the U.S. government and allow the case to proceed through the Ecuadorian justice system.
Chevron is attempting to use political leverage to threaten Ecuador with revocation of trade preferences with the U.S. A Chevron lobbyist summed up the company’s approach regarding the Ecuador case, telling Newsweek magazine, “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies . . .”
"It comes as no surprise that Chevron, a corporation whose record reveals a single-minded commitment to profit margin at the expense of even a modicum of social responsibility, is trying to bully a small Latin American country into submission, but it is not tolerable," said Paul Donowitz, EarthRights International (ERI) Campaigns Coordinator. “We hope that even the oil-friendly Bush Administration rejects their hubris and lets the Ecuadorian courts determine its liability for their legacy of degradation that has despoiled the Amazon.”
Chevron previously agreed to submit to jurisdiction in Ecuador and be bound by the local court’s decision when it succeeded in moving the case from U.S. to Ecuador. The case alleges that Texaco (now Chevron), dumped over 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon between 1964 and 1990, devastating the pristine rain-forest environment, causing massive health problems for the local, indigenous communities. A court-appointed expert assessed Chevron’s liability at between $7.2 billion and $16.3 billion this year. However, faced with a ruling next year from Ecuador, which could lead to the largest ever damages awarded in an environmental lawsuit, Chevron has taken this new tact.
It has been widely reported that Chevron has hired a team of lobbyists, including former Senator Trent Lott; former Clinton White House Chief of Staff, Mac McLarty; John Breaux, former Democratic Senator; and Wayne Berman, former McCain fund-raiser to pressure the U.S. Trade Representative to revoke trade preferences with Ecuador unless the case is dismissed.
Luis Gallegos, Ecuador’s U.S. ambassador, has said a failure to extend the trade preferences by the end of the year would cost the country 350,000 jobs and force 1.2 million people into poverty.
The lobbying effort is consistent with Chevron’s multi-faceted effort to distract from their dismal human rights and environmental record that includes their new, multi-million dollar “Human Energy” ad campaign – presenting the company as a leader in responsible and innovative solutions to the world’s environmental and energy challenges – and their recently announced five-year partnership with the Tiger Woods Foundation.
“The reality is that from the Ecuadorian communities whose lands and lives have been ruined by Chevron’s toxic legacy, to Nigerian villagers shot by soldiers directed by Chevron while peacefully advocating more control over their own resources, to crucial revenue from Chevron operations keeping the Burmese junta afloat — the oil giant’s record of abuse and opportunism is shameful,” added ERI Executive Director and Co-Founder, Ka Hsaw Wa.
In Nigeria, Chevron has been implicated in numerous human rights abuses over the past decade; from the 1998 killing of peaceful protesters at a Chevron platform, to the 2005 shooting of protesters at a Chevron tank farm, to recent accusations that Chevron Nigeria is deploying heavily armed security in the oil-rich Delta to beat, molest and intimidate people away from their communities.
In Burma, Chevron is partnering with the Burmese military regime in the Yadana gas project, which is the single-largest source of income for the brutal regime and which benefits from forced labor and other abuses committed by soldiers guarding the project. Some abuses associated with this pipeline were compensated in a 2005 legal settlement (Doe v. Unocal), but recent documentation by EarthRights International and other groups shows that abuses are continuing.
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