Chevron's environmental oil case turns into duel in the Amazon

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Monday, 04.18.11
Chevron's environmental oil case turns into duel in the Amazon

Idyllic Ecuador – or ‘toxic’ Ecuador? These contradictory visions are at the heart of excursions for tourists led by Chevron and by environmentalists.

BY JIM WYSS
[e-mail]

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador -- Donald Moncayo walks to the edge of a flat grassy field that once held two large pits that brimmed with a stew of water and crude from an oil-drilling operation. He lifts a heavy auger above his head and prepares to plunge it into the ground.

“They always show you the shirt the coat and the tie,” he said of the area, called Sacha 53, which is now pastureland and spindly trees. “They never show you the tumor underneath the shirt.”

For almost a decade, celebrities, journalists and shareholders have tromped through Ecuador’s jungles on competing excursions that have become a routine part of what could be the world’s most expensive environmental case.

The “Toxic Tour” — led by Moncayo — is held on behalf of some 30,000 Ecuadorian villagers who claim Chevron’s predecessor poisoned their environment with shoddy environmental practices that included pumping millions of gallons of oil-tainted wastewater into creeks and streams.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/10/2174079/site-visits-at-center-of-chevron.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Miami Herald – A big metro sends a reporter to Ecuador, to check out Chevron’s drilling practices

Miami Herald – A big metro sends a reporter to Ecuador, to check out Chevron’s drilling practices

Those were the days, not so many years ago, when big American metros regularly sent eagle-eyed, sharp-writing reporters off to exotic places to get the skinny on big issues. I’ve been wondering whether any in the US, outside NYTimes, Wash Post, maybe Wall St. Journal, still did it.

The Miami Herald does it. At least, it just did. This week it features a story from staffer Jim Wyss who filed on the long-running lawsuit battle between envirogroups and allied native tribes in Ecuador’s share of the Amazon Basin, on one side, and Chevron on the other. At issue is pollution and other damages left behind years back by Texaco, a company that subsequently merged with Chevron. The issue is that while Texaco and its local subsidiary were absolved of further responsibility by Ecuador’s gov’t for their open pits of crude waste and stream contamination after a lump sum payoff in the early 90’s, the nation’s court said later that third parties still could sue. And they have. It’s been going on for years. Plaintiffs have won judgment of billions of dollars. The oil company says the problem is greedy lawyers and falsification of evidence. Etc etc. and fingers are pointed in all directions.

One would think that if a newspaper sends a crusading journalist into a jungle to check out this odyssey of industrial exploitation of natural resources, that the reporter would come back with a blistering indictment of corporate greed and a suffering culture and ecosystem as its victim. That’s the script.

There is a lot of that. But the oil company gets a pretty fair piece of the story to present its side too. I’m betting Chevron winds up paying the billions. I doubt that it has been railroaded by greedy green lawyers. But one has to hand it to Wyss, when confronted by conflicting evidence and narratives, for not just assuming the big corporation has gotta be guilty and as black of heart as the oil it sought. Ambiguity is the bane of narrative-seeking journalism. But when it’s all you got, that’s the story.

http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/2011/04/19/miami-herald-a-big-metro-sends-a-reporter-to-ecuador-to-check-out-chevrons-drilling-practices/