Posted by
Defend America on Thursday, February 11, 2010 6:14:43 PM
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.
It goes back a while. Between 1965 and 1990, the old Texaco company
developed oil concessions in Ecuador. (Texaco merged with Chevron in
2001, hence Chevron is now in the dock.) Between 1977 and 1990, Ecuador
progressively nationalized Texaco assets, and transferred them to the
state oil firm, Petroecuador.
In the early 1990s, Texaco and Petroecuador agreed to clean up a
number of oil sites. Texaco kept its side of the bargain, and in 1998
the government of Ecuador certified that Texaco successfully cleaned up
its share of the operations.
Nonetheless, in 1994 a group of U.S. attorneys sued Texaco in the
U.S. They made novel legal claims for “environmental justice.”
Eventually, the case was dismissed in the United States and a new case
was filed against Chevron in Ecuador.
The Ecuadorean court appointed an “expert witness” to make factual
findings and to calculate damages. Turns out that the “expert” is a
mining engineer named Richard Cabrera, who has direct financial ties to
the plaintiffs and as we learned this week, hidden ties to Petroecuador.
http://biggovernment.com/bwking/2010/02/11/chevron-witch-trial-yields-bizarre-27-billion-environmental-claim/#more-73614