Chevron's lobbying campaign backfires.

A few days ago KENNETH VOGEL of Politico wrote an interesting article on how Chevron’s fallacious defense strategy is bringing the oil giant down.

Here’s the link for the article: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29560.html

With what seems to be unlimited financial resources, Chevron is having really hard time trying to defend itself. A while ago, as a response to CBS’s 60 Minutes, Chevron released a video showing Chevron’s side of the story. The oil giant was trying to get its point across but made the mistake of trying to fool people into believing it was a real news report. That was not taken well by the viewers.

A few months later Chevron took it even further and released videos of two men offering a bribe to the Ecuadorian judge. The problem...those recordings were made by a convicted felon and a Chevron contractor and the judge never accepted the bribe! Chevron claims it had no knowledge of the videos being made, but it seems completely unbelievable. Again, the public was misled.

Chevron fought for a very long time to have the case moved to Ecuador. Now, as we’re getting close to a ruling from the Ecuadorian court, Chevron is getting desperate.

As I mentioned in my last post, Chevron is trying to have Ecuador’s trading preferences taken away for supposedly not acting in accordance with the 1995 remediation agreement. The fact that it is Texaco that did not fulfill the main requirement of the agreement is ignored. Testing on samples from the waste pits prove that there was no clean up. The sites that were supposed to be remediated are as toxic as the ones that have never been touched. (See the list in my post form Nov 7th.) This itself makes the agreement invalid.

Chevron can afford to hire the best people in the business to improve its image but it seems like every step they take ends up making them look as guilty as they really are.

For more detail see: http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com

Whatever it takes to avoid taking responsibility …

With its enormous profits and unlimited number of paid consultants, Chevron is lobbying Congress and the Office of the US Trade Representative to impose trade sanctions on Ecuador hoping it will halt the lawsuit for oil contamination in the Ecuadorian rainforest. The oil giant claims the 1995 remediation agreement between Texaco and the government of Ecuador releases Texaco from any liability. Chevron is trying to punish Ecuadorian government for supposedly not abiding by the agreement. But there are a few facts Chevron does not mention.

This remediation agreement released Texaco of any government liability but not individual people’s right to sue. The Ecuadorian indigenous groups filed this lawsuit in 1993 two years before the remediation agreement was signed.

Most importantly, the agreement is invalid as Texaco never cleaned up the pits as the agreement required. Tests taken during the trial show that almost all of the oil sites that Texaco had supposedly cleaned up still show illegal levels of toxins. Many of them are as bad as the ones Texaco did not remediate. Dumping dirt on top of the waste pits does not count as a cleanup and does not take the problem away.

Interestingly, two Chevron lawyers and several former Ecuadorian officials have been indicted by the Ecuadorian government for lying about the results of Texaco’s remediation. So not only is the agreement not valid, but it also seems to have been a hoax from the very beginning.

Chevron is getting tangled up in its own web of lies!

Why did Texaco let this happen?

I was thinking… why did Texaco let a disaster like this happen? Texaco dumps 18 billion gallons of oil and toxic water into the rainforest and walks away. Now the people living there are sick and dying, and they want it cleaned up! Can you blame them? It’s hard to believe Texaco didn’t know its system was substandard or that dumping toxins into waterways would cause a major environmental problem. Did Texaco just not care and chose the cheapest way to dispose of the toxic sludge by simply dumping it into the streams and leaving it to poison people and the Amazonian forest?

Texaco committed a crime first by polluting the soil and water and then by pretending to clean it up. Scientific tests have shown that 98% of the oil sites that Texaco had supposedly cleaned up still have illegal levels of toxins. Most of them are as bad as the ones that have not been remediated!

Now there’s Chevron… covering up Texaco’s crimes, refusing to help those affected by them and trying to derail the lawsuit.

For more information about the contamination, go to: www.chevrontoxico.com or www.thechevronpit.blogspot.com

The Chevron Way: If We Repeat Lies Enough, Maybe Somebody Will Believe Us!

Chevron’s only defense in the massive oil contamination lawsuit brought by Ecuadorians living in the Amazon rainforest is that Texaco cleaned its share of the oil sites in exchange for a liability release in a 1995 agreement with Ecuador. Problem is, this isn’t true: 1) Tests show lethal levels of toxins at 45 of 54 of the so-called “cleaned” pits & 2) The agreement did not release Texaco from individual claims, only those by the government. See the list of the pits below.

In the list below, you’ll see TPH; that stands for total petroleum hydrocarbons. The higher the TPH, the worse the contamination. In the US, a lot of states allow only 100 parts per million of TPH. In Ecuador, it’s 1,000 parts per million. As you can see below, the numbers are thousands of times higher than what the law allows. And, Chevron wants us to believe these pits are clean!

Chevron, though, never lets the facts stand in its way. See this CNN interview by Anchor Rick Sanchez with Chevron attorney Silvia Garrigo, preceded by an interview with human rights activitist Kerry Kennedy who visited the oil pits recently and spoke out against Chevron’s refusal to take responsibility for the contamination.

http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2009/1022-kerry-kennedy-interviewed-on-cnn.html

Before signing off, Garrigo also happily informs Sanchez that some of her best friends are Ecuadorians. If that’s the way she treats her friends, then ......

#	SITE	CHEVRON’S CLAIM	TPH	NUMBER OF TIMES OVER LEGAL LIMIT
1	Sacha 18	Complete Remediation	35,380	35.3
2	Sacha 65	Complete Remediation	32,444	32.4
3	Shushufindi 27	Complete Remediation	26,413	26.4
4	Atacapi 5	Complete Remediation	21,976	21.9
5	Sacha 21	Complete Remediation	17,000	17
6	Shushufindi 21	Complete Remediation	16,033	16
7	Shushufindi 67	Complete Remediation	13,587	13.5
8	Shushufindi 45A	Complete Remediation	13,290	13.2
9	Shushufindi 48	Complete Remediation	13,000	13
10	Shushufindi 7	Complete Remediation	12,715	12.7
11	Shushufindi 25	Complete Remediation	10,956	10.9
12	Shushufindi 27	Complete Remediation	10,452	10.4
13	Ron 1	Complete Remediation	9,632	9.6
14	Lago Agrio 5	Complete Remediation	8,830	8.8
15	Sacha 94	Complete Remediation	8,700	8.7
16	Aguarico 8	Complete Remediation	8,183	8.1
17	Sacha 57	Complete Remediation	8,100	8.1
18	Sacha 65	Complete Remediation	7,519	7.5
19	Sacha 53	Complete Remediation	7,430	7.4
20	Shushufindi 13	Complete Remediation	7,415	7.4
21	Sacha 51	Complete Remediation	7,200	7.2
22	Shushufindi 45A	Complete Remediation	5,721	5.7
23	Sacha 94	Complete Remediation	5,600	5.6
24	Shushufindi 25	Complete Remediation	5,574	5.5
25	Guanta 4	Complete Remediation	5,510	5.5
26	Shushufindi 7	Complete Remediation	5,334	5.3
27	Shushufindi 48	Complete Remediation	5,000	5
28	Shushufindi 18	Complete Remediation	4,881	4.8
29	Lago Agrio 2	Complete Remediation	4,777	4.7
30	Auca 19	Complete Remediation	4,014	4
31	Yuca 28	Complete Remediation	3,876	3.8
32	Shushufindi 46	Complete Remediation	3,697	3.6
33	Sacha 56	Complete Remediation	3,600	3.6
34	Sacha 6	Complete Remediation	3,300	3.3
35	Shushufindi 21	Complete Remediation	3,133	3.1
36	Sacha 51	Complete Remediation	3,100	3.1
37	Shushufindi 48	Complete Remediation	3,000	3
38	Sacha 10	Complete Remediation	2,802	2.8
39	Shushufindi 48	Complete Remediation	2,700	2.7
40	Sacha 57	Complete Remediation	2,400	2.4
41	Shushufindi 24	Complete Remediation	2,180	2.1
42	Parahuacu 3	Complete Remediation	2,065.12	2.065
43	Shushufindi 24	Complete Remediation	2,000	2
44	Shushufindi 8	Complete Remediation	1,600	1.6
45	Lago Agrio 6	Complete Remediation	1,300	1.3