The plot is generic Hollywood, straight out of an airport potboiler:
U.S. oil company drills in Amazon, leaves behind contaminated pools of sludge. Activists sue on behalf of rainforest Indians ravaged by disease. Environmentalists and rock stars rush in to show solidarity with the victims. Not hard to tell how this story ends; we’ve seen this movie before.
Except that in this drama, the actors don’t quite play to type. It turns out that the “good guys” cheat, manipulating an Andean countries’ weak and corrupt judicial system in a bid to extract a king’s ransom — $27.3 billion -– from the U.S. oil company. Meanwhile, that company’s claims to be a victim of a political shakedown is getting a sympathetic hearing in U.S. courts.
So maybe this murky saga is not Hollywood material after all. In any case, here’s the real story, courtesy of Roger Parloff on CNNMoney.com:
Ecuador ended its long-time oil exploration partnership with Texaco in 1990. Texaco worked out an agreement to help clean up sites in the Amazon, and was formally absolved of further liability by Ecuador’s then-government in 1998. Nonetheless, a lawsuit was filed subsequently on behalf of Indians who said they had suffered higher rates of cancer and other diseases as a result of exposure to toxic waste. A new Ecuadoran government led by Rafael Correa, a socialist and fiery champion of impoverished indigenous peoples, strongly backs the suit.
According to Parloff, there’s strong evidence that lawyers for the plaintiffs helped to write the report of an allegedly impartial “expert” appointed by an Ecuadoran court that found Texaco – since acquired by Chevron – liable for further damages. A U.S. magistrate recently issued a scathing ruling that said the plaintiffs’ apparent collusion with Ecuador’s judicial system “would be considered fraud by any court. If such conduct does not amount to fraud in a particular country, then that country has larger problems than an oil spill.”
The plaintiff’s misconduct has overshadowed the important questions: how badly did the Indians suffer from exposure to toxic waste, and who is responsible for cleaning up the sites? It’s alleged that Texaco’s remediation efforts were inadequate, even if a compliant Ecuadoran government approved them. Yet Ecuador’s state-owned oil company has continued to drill in the area since Texaco pulled out 20 years ago.
This episode yields at least three morals. First, oil exploration is hazardous, and its full environmental and health costs must always be accounted for. Second, the end doesn’t justify the means, even if the end is to bring justice to people harmed by the effects of oil drilling. And third, it pays to greet overly familiar plot lines, with stock villains and heroes, with an extra measure of skepticism.
photo credit: Rain Forest Action Network
