Chevron lawyers can’t make up their mind. First they claim Ecuadorian plaintiffs don’t exist at all, then they say maybe they do exist but are irrelevant to the pollution lawsuit.

Just look at the Lou Dematteis’ pictures and see how very real those people and the contamination that is killing them are.

Another sludgee move by Chevron.  See The Chevron Pit. Chevron PR flak Jim Craig won’t answer questions about news reports Chevron offered Ecuador what is basically a bribe of $1 billion to get the $18 billion environmental contamination lawsuit dropped. This I know: If somebody accused me of offering a bribe and I didn’t do it, I would immediately deny it. Very suspicious.

Questions are being raised about the two men who could be potential witnesses to expose Chevron’s unethical and often illegal practices in Ecuador. Wayne Hansen and Diego Borja were involved in some of Chevron’s dirty schemes, and it’s possible the oil giant is paying them a lot of money to keep them quiet. According to the San Francisco Daily Journal, Chevron paid Borja around $340,000. A recent Reuters story reported that Hansen wrote an email to one of Chevron’s private investigative firms that he was “living the life of a king” in Peru. The Chevron Pit reports:

“A Chevron dirty trickster is apparently enjoying the good life on the beaches of Peru after unsuccessfully trying to derail the historic Ecuadorian lawsuit against the oil giant for oil contamination. His partner, another Chevron operative, has been on the Chevron payroll since June 2009, receiving $10,000 to $15,000 a month but doing no legitimate work for the company.”

You won’t find any sludge in the fancy pool outside Chevron’s CEO mansion! It is probably filled with money, lots of money! John Watson makes $1.6 million yearly salary but gets millions more in cash bonuses, very generous contributions to his employee savings plan, stocks and is flown around in company’s private plane. Last year he brought home around $14 million! Meanwhile, Chevron and its law firm, Gibson Dunn, continues to accuse the indigenous people of Ecuador of extortion simply because they would like his company to cleanup the contamination it left behind.

…getting his hands dirty with Chevron’s sludge.
Why would a U.S. Judge think he can tell an Ecuadorian Judge what to do? Chevron fought to try the case in Ecuador. The company is getting what it asked for.

Blaming Petroecuador will not get you out of trouble and here is why:

• Sites operated by Chevron only and closed before Petroecuador became operator contain illegal levels of toxic materials, in violation of Ecuadorian laws.
• The vast majority of contamination at well sites occurs during the drilling and development (not once production starts), and the Ecuadorians’ lawsuit incorporates only well sites and stations built and operated by Chevron.
• Petroecuador inherited Chevron’s sub-standard and faulty infrastructure designed with the intention of releasing toxins into the environment. Chevron’s subsequent abandonment of its facilities does not absolve it of liability.
• Petroecuador made dramatic improvements in Chevron’s prior environmental practices in virtually every respect, including building re-injection wells to pump the wastewater back into the ground, instead of dumping it directly in the rainforest as Texaco did. Petroecuador also stopped using unlined pits for permanent storage of the toxic sludge and developed an oil spill reporting and management system, something Chevron never did.

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