Forget WallyWorld, at Chevron They Live in WatsonWorld

Reposted from Eye on the Amazon, May 31, 2013 

There are many ways to describe the experience of participating in a Chevron Annual Shareholder Meeting. One is often left wondering if those inside are as completely divorced from reality as their words suggest, or if they are just putting on a show for a room full of cardboard cut outs of corporate yes-men. This past Wednesday was no exception. While hundreds protested outside the 2013 Chevron Annual Shareholder Meeting holding the largest "pink slip" you've even seen reading, "Watson: You're Fired!" Chevron CEO John Watson once again demonstrated that he is largely divorced from reality when it comes to the company's $19B liability in Ecuador and its other environmental problems, both local and global. Watson would hate to admit it, but once again the meeting was dominated by his critics and the largest ever shareholder support for Ecuador-related resolutions.

The Chevron Way: We Know Better

Time and again when faced with shareholder resolutions critical of Chevron or the compassionate voices of community members living with the harsh reality of exposure to the company's toxic operations, Watson claimed it was his critics who were "unfamiliar with the facts". Servio Curipoma, who has lived his entire life in the Ecuadorian Amazon surrounded by Chevron waste pits, who lost his parents to cancer caused by Chevron contamination, does not need Watson to tell him what it's "really like" in Ecuador. Yet Watson dismissed his testimony and offered Servio nothing but his "pity" for being "used by US trial lawyers."

Likewise, Dr. Henry Clark of Richmond, CA, whose 15,000 neighbors were sent to the hospital last August after Chevron's refinery blew up into a fire, or Laura Livoti, representing JINN and the Nigerians who suffer from never-ending flaring and a rig fire that burned for six weeks in 2012, do not need Watson to tell THEM their reality. They are living it. Watson told Ms. Livoti that she should consult with some of his executives, who have a greater understanding of what goes on in Nigeria. The grim reality is that due in great part to environmental conditions caused by Chevron's operations, the Nigerians in the area only have a 41-year life expectancy. With that dire statistic, it's conceivable that Chevron execs COULD be there on the ground for longer.

To the community of Richmond, long suffering from Chevron's toxic refinery and its poor safety record (now under criminal investigation, Watson's message was that his refinery actually has a better safety record than others in California. Funny, not a single other refinery in California BLEW UP last year!

Amazon Watch founder and Executive Director Atossa Soltani stood to remind Watson, the board and the other shareholders that she was there BEFORE Chevron bought Texaco with over 800 pages of evidence that Texaco was an enormous liability for what it had done in Ecuador. Watson's "bubble" appeared to weaken as he became visibly disturbed when Ms. Soltani reminded everyone that he himself was head of mergers and acquisitions at the time. What was then estimated to be a minor nuisance by lawyers and investment bankers anxious to close the merger deal for their exorbitant fees has since ballooned into a $19 billion judgment that rises every year with interest. Chevron is already spending an estimated $400 million per year just in legal fees, dwarfing the $40 million it claims it spent on its sham clean-up in Ecuador. Unwilling to even reply to Ms. Soltani, Watson turned on a completely unrelated video clip and then had her removed from the room by four security guards when she attempted to respond. The Watson World bubble remained intact, but only to Watson and the true believers (read: personally conflicted managers) he appears surrounded by on his executive team.

Facts vs Fiction: On WatsonWorld up is down

Real World: Texaco (now Chevron) builds and operates a system designed to pollute and then dumps 16 billion gallons of toxic foundation waters into the rainforest over decades causing a wave of cancers and other deadly illnesses.

In WatsonWorld: the local water shows ZERO signs of toxicity and is totally safe to drink, even though Chevron's own lawyers luxuriated with bottled water imported from Quito during the eight-year trial in the jungle. Furthermore, anyone who complains about it and pushes for a clean-up is a "global conspirator" out to extort billions from good global citizen Chevron.

Real World: Socially responsible investment firms collaborate with human rights and environmental organizations to challenge a company's false assertions and work with shareholders with billions of dollars of assets in Chevron to create reform from within.

In WatsonWorld: every single person involved should be forced to turn over every private communication they've ever made about Chevron because if they are critical they must therefore be part of a massive global conspiracy to defraud the company.

Real World: An offshore rig burns for six weeks off the coast of Nigeria, killing workers, destroying fishing, and sickening communities.

In WatsonWorld: That's called, "no damage to the community."

Real World: Chevron spills over 100,000 gallons of crude oil off the coast of Brazil, resulting in hundreds of millions in fines and billions of dollars of potential liability.

In WatsonWorld: There's no need for greater oversight of Chevron's offshore work because Chevron is "committed to safe operations."

Back to Earth

Outside, hundreds of protesters representing dozens of environmental and human rights organizations, and communities who live in the harsh REAL world of Chevron's operations, reminded Watson and Chevron that no amount of misdirection and factual distortion is going to make them go away. They continue to call for his firing and for true accountability and they pledge to stand up to Chevron until justice is achieved.

Perhaps sweetest of all is the fact that Watson will be forced to testify soon under oath about the Ecuador disaster in a case brought by Chevron itself that is rapidly threatening to bite the company on its own backside. Without his protective WatsonWorld bubble, he's likely to find that in the real world there are penalties for lying about Chevron's actions and misdeeds.

– Paul Paz y Miño

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Chevron Puts Workers’ Lives In Danger at Richmond Refinery

Allows Plant to Run As Leak Fixed, Workers Barely Escape Ignited Vapor Cloud

Investigators are asking why Chevron allowed its Richmond, California refinery to continue to operate as its employees worked on a pipe leak that resulted in a fire, sending over 1,000 local citizens to the hospital.

According to this San Francisco Chronicle story, the workers – repairing the leak -- barely escaped a vapor cloud that ignited.

They also are asking why an 8-inch carbon steel pipe that failed wasn’t replaced in November during a round of maintenance.

Why? Because Chevron cares only about the bottom line, and if not replacing a pipe saves the company money, then why replace the pipe?

As in Nigeria and Ecuador, the only people who could be harmed in Richmond are mostly poor people of color.

In Nigeria, Chevron refused to evacuate workers from an oil rig that exploded and killed two workers. Chevron had no boats to rescue the workers who jumped into the water. Local fisherman had to do that.  See here.

In Ecuador, Chevron refuses to pay a $19 billion judgment for massive oil contamination of the rainforest, even though the company agreed to abide by the findings of an Ecuador court, when a U.S. judge sent the case to the South American country at Chevron’s request in 2002.

The damage award would be used to clean up its pollution that continues to leech into underground drinking water. It also would provide health care facilities and clean drinking water for the indigenous groups and other people living near the contamination.

And, then there’s this:  In its last earnings statement, Chevron reported $21 billion in surplus cash. 

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Chevron’s Growing Reputation As Rogue Company Reinforced by New Charges of Misconduct in Nigeria

Reinforcing Chevron’s growing reputation as a rogue company ignoring safety requirements and local laws in countries across the globe is a recent report that Chevron refused to allow its workers to evacuate an oilrig in Nigeria before an explosion killed two men.

Reuters recently reported the workers had raised safety concerns and asked to evacuate but Chevron refused. About 154 workers jumped from the rig into water and had to be rescued by local fishermen.

“Chevron knew for over a week that the well was unstable yet they refused to evacuate us," a worker said in the Reuters article. A witness said, “If it were not for the fisherman those guys would have died in the water.”

This latest incident is one example of Chevron’s long history of ravaging natural environments, violating human rights and ignoring indigenous communities in countries across the globe, including Ecuador, Burma, Angola, Australia and even in its own corporate backyard, Richmond, California.

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As Bad As Chevron Behaved Last Year, This Year It's Worse

Rebecca Tarbotton got it exactly right in her blog yesterday, titled Chevron's Worst Year Ever.

 As bad as oil companies behave -- both here at home and abroad -- Chevron takes the cake, especially this year. In a series of blogs, Tarbotton is posting about the oil giant's massive legal losses in Ecuador, its offshore disasters in Brazil and Nigeria, the indisputable contamination it is causing today in Kazakhstan, as well as the tragic deaths of the company's own employees in several locations, including in its home state of California.

Tarbotton is amplifying the voices of people who live in these countries and are fighting Chevron's efforts to hide behind its feel-good public face of expensive advertising designed to misled people, especially here in the United States.

She quotes from a letter to Chevron, written by Sergey Solyanik of Crude Accountability about the village of Berezovka in Kazakhstan:

"For nine years the residents of the village of Berezovka, which is located a mere five kilometers from the Karachaganak Oil and Gas Condensate Field, have been fighting for relocation to an environmentally clean and safe location. When exploitation of the field first began, the health of the 1300 residents of Berezovka radically worsened. The population is now suffering regularly from headaches and memory loss, muscular-skeletal problems, vision loss, cardio-vascular difficulties, serious gastroenterological problems, upper respiratory illness, and skin ailments. According to independent data, approximately half of the villagers suffer from chronic illness. The residents feel the impacts of hydrogen sulfide and other toxic chemicals that are connected with oil extraction and refining." 

Solyanik was one of about 30 people who Chevron threw out of a shareholder meeting two years ago, even though he had a legitimate proxie and had traveled all the way from Kazakhstan just to attend. While Solyanik will not be able to attend Chevron's shareholder meeting next week on May 30th, Luz Trinidad Andrea Cusangua of Ecuador will.

Here are the words of Cusangua, a farmer whose source of water has been contaminated by Chevron's oil.  She wrote to Chevron:

"We have won the lawsuit against Chevron, but still the company doesn’t want to accept responsibility for what they have done. They have no shame. They remain arrogant. They call us liars. But I have lived through the contamination that they left here. They can’t contradict me! The river close to my house was our source of life, and when Texaco drilled the wells Sacha 89, 90, 91 and even Sacha 5 and 13, the river became filled with oil. My children suffered because of the contamination. Their feet rotted, they had warts and rashes on their skin. And my mother got cancer on her nose. Do you think that there would be so much cancer in a virgin forest? I remember the nights when my feet would burn, and I would cry from pain, and slowly my feet would start to rot, and the skin would fall off piece by piece. All of this sickness was caused by the contamination that Chevron left here in the Amazon."

Luz Trinidad Andrea Cusangua

Tarbotton will be featuring the opinions of other people from across the globe in future blogs.

Chevron will dismiss these people and say that they are lying; that others are to blame; that there is a grand worldwide conspiracy to extort money from the company.

But it cannot be that so many people from so many countries are so wrong, and Chevron is so right.

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Dead fish, health problems emerge as Chevron rig off Nigeria continues to burn after accident

The AP ran this horrific story yesterday about the devastating impact a Chevron natural gas rig fire is having on Nigerians. This is yet another example of Chevron's haphazard approach to oil exploration: Ecuador, Brazil and now Nigeria.  The entire story is below.  

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, February 6, 6:27 AM

LAGOS, Nigeria — The burning inferno of what used to be a Chevron Corp. natural gas rig still stains the night’s sky orange more than two weeks after the rig caught fire, and no one can say when it will end as swarms of dead fish surface.

The environmental damage is hitting a region whose poor still rely on the delta’s muddy waters for survival. A nearby clinic remains overrun with patients who are showing up with skin irritations and gastrointestinal problems.

“The community here has no other source of water apart from the river water, which on its own isn’t even safe enough to drink, but the pollution has made the water even worse,” said Dr. Oladipo Folorunso, the only doctor in the town of Ikebiri.

Folorunso attributes the illnesses to the burning rig, as rising temperatures in water can cause bacteria to thrive. A satellite image showed that the fire at a point was at least 1,340 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly 730 degrees Celsius), “hot enough to soften steel,” an independent watchdog group called SkyTruth said.

The fire began Jan. 16 from a shallow-water gas well for Chevron’s Nigerian subsidiary near its North Apoi oil platform. The accident killed two foreign workers and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage.

Chevron says it continues to investigate what started the fire but is not offering any estimate on how long it will burn.

Nigeria’s government believes a “gas kick” — a major buildup of gas pressure from drilling — was responsible, said Levi Ajuonoma, a spokesman for the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.

In Koluama 1, a community less than six miles (10 kilometers) from the fire, the traditional ruler says Chevron and the federal government are not doing enough to address the problem.

“We need the federal government to come in,” Jeremiah T. C. Leghemo said. “These relief materials are provided by Chevron because the state government prevailed on Chevron to provide them, but the people are suffering.”

Chevron said last week that it was moving “food and supplies to the communities in the area to recognize the help and support that they have given us.”

A report by local watchdog Environmental Rights Action said the area — home to tens of thousands of people — received 50 bags of rice, 50 bags of cassava flour, one cow, vegetable oil, palm and groundnut oil, cartons of tomatoes and canned drinks.

The federal government is still putting together help for the community, said Yushau Shuaib, spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency. He could not immediately say what the materials would include.

It also remains unclear when the fire will be put out. Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, has said that it would take 30 days to drill to total depth of 9,000 feet (2,740 meters) to create a relief well that would help put out the fire.

The company on Thursday said it had finished its drilling plans. When pressed to say how long it would take to extinguish the fire, the company declined to comment.

“We cannot predict how long the process will take, but what we can tell you is we will do so as quickly as possible while continuing to maintain safe operations,” the company said in a statement.

Critics say the situation around the burning rig is symptomatic of how the government that enjoys billions from oil sales fails to protect its people.

Foreign firms have pumped oil for more than 50 years out of the delta, a region of swamps, mangroves and creeks roughly the same size as South Carolina. Many in the delta remain desperately poor, living in polluted waters without access to proper medical care, education or work.

Nigerian regulators often fall back on international standards set by engineering and trade groups as a yardstick for safety measures, but the country’s institutionalized graft and mismanagement means oil companies largely answer only to themselves in safety matters.


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Chevron Bribing Becomes SOP?

We've written before about Chevron's willingness to jump into the bribing business, where expedient, paying soldiers, auditors, etc. But now it appears this is just becoming a day-to-day thing for the company. According to the Asia Times, Chevron has refused to disclose how much the company paid officials in Cambodia to secure the rights to drill in the area.

''[Chevron has] yet to respond to our detailed questions in a letter written to the company in October 2008,'' said Gavin Hayman, campaigns director for Global Witness (GW), a London-based anti-corruption watchdog. ''It is not in favor of supplying information about what it pays foreign governments to secure rights for oil exploration.''

Chevron's attitude towards disclosure ''will be telling'', he said in an interview, since revelations could help measure the scale of ''under-the-table payments'' involved in a country where a small and powerful elite has ''captured the country's emerging oil and mineral sectors'' for personal gain.

According to the article, Cambodia lacks a well-functioning anti-corruption regime and is susceptible to "the powerful few filling their personal coffers" from the extractive industry. This is a perfect situation for Chevron and is very reminiscent of Ecuador circa 1964 or so. After all, the company has already been awarded part of the mining contract, with oil to start flowing in 2011 to the tune of $174 million annually, with oil production probably reaching $1.7 billion annually at its peak.

Hey Cambodia, be careful – I know this oil deal-with-the-devil thing seems like a good idea now, but you may want to take a look at how this same dance worked out for Burma, Ecuador and Nigeria. You may figure out that you don't want to be dealing with cancer, human rights violations, and the wholesale destruction of your country 20 years down the line.

Just a thought.

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WTF is going on? Is Chevron just evil?

News out of San Francisco today: Chevron, which posted a record profit of $23.8 billion in 2008 is suing a group of Nigerian villagers for almost $500,000 in legal costs resulting from a embarrassing legal case (Bowoto v. Chevron) that Chevron narrowly survived this past November. This was the legal case in which a group of unarmed Nigerian villagers were shot and killed during the oil-derrick version of a sit-in protest. The villagers sought to hold Chevron responsible since it paid for, housed, fed, and directed the Nigerian military forces who shot the protestors. While Chevron prevailed during the trial, the entire episode was seen as a public relations disaster as a high-profile human rights trial took place just miles from Chevron's San Ramon, CA headquarters, further tarnishing Chevron's already shoddy image. Take a look at Dan Firger's blog on the Huffington Post - Landmark Human Rights Trial Bowoto v. Chevron Set To Begin October 27 for a short recap.

Well, now Chevron has added insult to injury, seeking $500,000 from the villagers who sued the company. So, people on Chevron's payroll literally shot the villagers, and now Chevron wants the villagers to pay the corporation for daring to take the company to trial over the shootings. Now, I don't have a ton of experience in this area, but I was always of the mindset that if you shoot someone its bad form to ask them to pay for the bullet. I mean damn, is Dick Cheney running Chevron now? Who shoots someone and then tries to make them pay for the fact that you shot them? And even Cheney only made his friend apologize for getting shot...I mean, this just reeks of heartless evil. According to the L.A. Times:

Laura Livoti, founder of Bay Area-based Justice in Nigeria Now, said the $485,000 sought by Chevron, California's largest company, would constitute a fortune for the Nigerians. That sum would be enough to sustain at least four villages in the Niger Delta for a year, she said.

"Chevron's attempt to squeeze nearly half a million dollars out of poor villagers who don't even have access to clean drinking water and who had wanted jobs with the company is a dramatic illustration of Chevron's heartlessness," she said.

In its claim, Chevron is seeking reimbursement from 19 plaintiffs and 30 former plaintiffs who dropped out of the case before it went to trial. At least a dozen of those named are children, Livoti said.

So this is perfect: Chevron is now suing children for enough money to support their entire village (and their neighbors!) for an entire year. Suing children? What, were all the puppies and kittens already claimed by Halliburton? I mean, this is getting almost comic book supervillain-y - with the lawsuits against children after Chevron shot their parents - did Lex Luthor take over this company?

And it's not like Chevron needs the money. Chevron made $23.8 billion profit last year. That means Chevron was making $65.2 million per day, $2.7 million per hour, and $45,251.56 per minute. At that rate it would take Chevron all of 10.72 minutes to make the $485,000 they're suing the villagers for. And these numbers are based on Chevron's profits, not their revenues, even though the $485,000 Chevron is seeking would all be tax-deductible business expenses anyway, meaning it would probably take the company about 5 minutes to generate that revenue. But Chevron isn't one to pass up an opportunity to sue children and the downtrodden, so here we are.

Even if you buy Chevron's argument that they're just trying to dissuade future lawsuits like the Bowoto case, the whole idea of suing Nigerian villagers and children is just horrible. Don't they have a single public relations professional in San Ramon? I have to imagine that a company posting $23.8b profits can afford to hire someone who is savvy enough to say "um guys, maybe we shouldn't shoot unarmed and impoverished villagers. And if we do, let's just sort of pretend it didn't happen, say we're sorry and we didn't mean to and hope the bad p.r. goes away – let's not go sue the people we shot for more money than any of them will ever make in their lifetimes. Ok guys? Because it looks really bad when a company making billions and billions of dollars is suing poor people because they stood up to us. Ok? And, by the way, can someone open a window? It's beginning to smell like sulfur in here again…"

But I guess no one in Chevron cares. Or maybe they just can't see the folly of their actions through all the smoke from the fire and brimstone filling up their big offices.

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Chevron Wins Dubious Honor: Named to “10 Worst Corporations of 2008”

According to MoneyWeb, as 2008 ushered in a financial tsunami that became the biggest economic shakedown since the Great Depression, wide scale corporate corruption was forced out into the open witnessing a slew of business scandals.

AIG, Cargill, Chevron, Constellation Energy, CNPC, Dole, General Electric, Imperial Sugar, Philip Morris International and Roche top the list as the worst of the worst according to Multinational Monitor's annual list of the ten most terrible companies of the year.

"In the 20 years that we've published our annual list of worst corporations," says Robert Weissman, editor of the bi-monthly global economic publication. "We've covered corporate villains, scoundrels, criminals and miscreants. But we've never had a year like 2008."

"The financial meltdown and economic crisis," says Weissman, "illustrates that corporations - if left to their own worst instincts - will destroy themselves and the system that nurtures them."

The Multinational Monitor writes about Chevron:

Chevron: "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies"

The world has witnessed a stunning consolidation of the multinational oil companies over the last decade.

One of the big winners was Chevron. It swallowed up Texaco and Unocal, among others. It was happy to absorb their revenue streams. It has been less willing to take responsibility for ecological and human rights abuses perpetrated by these companies.

One of the inherited legacies from Chevron's 2001 acquisition of Texaco is litigation in Ecuador over the company's alleged decimation of the Ecuadorian Amazon over a 20-year period of operation. In 1993, 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians filed a class action suit in U.S. courts, alleging that Texaco had poisoned the land where they live and the waterways on which they rely, allowing billions of gallons of oil to spill and leaving hundreds of waste pits unlined and uncovered. They sought billions in compensation for the harm to their land and livelihood, and for alleged health harms. The Ecuadorians and their lawyers filed the case in U.S. courts because U.S. courts have more capacity to handle complex litigation, and procedures (including jury trials) that offer plaintiffs a better chance to challenge big corporations. Texaco, and later Chevron, deployed massive legal resources to defeat the lawsuit. Ultimately, a Chevron legal maneuver prevailed: At Chevron's instigation, U.S. courts held that the case should be litigated in Ecuador, closer to where the alleged harms occurred.

Having argued vociferously that Ecuadorian courts were fair and impartial, Chevron is now unhappy with how the litigation has proceeded in that country. So unhappy, in fact, that it is lobbying the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to impose trade sanctions on Ecuador if the Ecuadorian government does not make the case go away.

"We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this — companies that have made big investments around the world," a Chevron lobbyist said to Newsweek in August. (Chevron subsequently stated that "the comments attributed to an unnamed lobbyist working for Chevron do not reflect our company's views regarding the Ecuador case. They were not approved by the company and will not be tolerated.")

Chevron is worried because a court-appointed special master found in March that the company was liable to plaintiffs for between $7 billion and $16 billion. The special master has made other findings that Chevron's clean-up operations in Ecuador have been inadequate.

Another of Chevron's inherited legacies is the Yadana natural gas pipeline in Burma, operated by a consortium in which Unocal was one of the lead partners. Human rights organizations have documented that the Yadana pipeline was constructed with forced labor, and associated with brutal human rights abuses by the Burmese military.

EarthRights International, a human rights group with offices in Washington, D.C. and Bangkok, has carefully tracked human rights abuses connected to the Yadana pipeline, and led a successful lawsuit against Unocal/Chevron. In an April 2008 report, the group states that "Chevron and its consortium partners continue to rely on the Burmese army for pipeline security, and those forces continue to conscript thousands of villagers for forced labor, and to commit torture, rape, murder and other serious abuses in the course of their operations."

Money from the Yadana pipeline plays a crucial role in enabling the Burmese junta to maintain its grip on power. EarthRights International estimates the pipeline funneled roughly $1 billion to the military regime in 2007. The group also notes that, in late 2007, when the Burmese military violently suppressed political protests led by Buddhist monks, Chevron sat idly by.

Chevron has trouble in the United States, as well. In September, Earl Devaney, the inspector general for the Department of Interior, released an explosive report documenting "a culture of ethical failure" and a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" in the U.S. government program handling oil lease contracts on U.S. government lands and property. Government employees, Devaney found, accepted a stream of small gifts and favors from oil company representatives, and maintained sexual relations with them. (In one memorable passage, the inspector general report states that "sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length.") The report showed that Chevron had conferred the largest number of gifts on federal employees. It also complained that Chevron refused to cooperate with the investigation, a claim Chevron subsequently disputed.

Looks like we're not the only ones keeping an eye on Chevron's behavior around the world…

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Charles James: Chevron's In-House Karl Rove

Since Scott Gilmore is doing a great job chronicling the day-to-day of the landmark human rights trial of Bowoto v. Chevron, I thought I would turn my attention to one of the masterminds behind Chevron's defense.

As this trial moves into the 4th week, one of the more interesting aspects of the Bowoto case has been the role played by Charles James, Chevron's General Counsel who is often found at counsel's table, sitting and watching. James is the highest-ranking African American in Chevron, serves on the company's management committee with CEO David O'Reilly, and is considered a disciple of Karl Rove-style legal and political tactics. A product of the current Bush Administration, he served as an assistant attorney general for antitrust under John Ashcroft. One of the best examples of the importance (or lack thereof) James places on Chevron's image is his recent hiring of William J. Haynes, former General Counsel at the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (gotta wonder if Dick Cheney is next on his "to hire" list). Haynes signed off on the infamous "torture memo" that permitted waterboarding. The irony is that Chevron now has a suspected human rights violator -- Haynes -- helping to run a legal department that is trying to beat back charges that Chevron is a human rights violator itself.

The Bowoto trial is an example of how Chevron faces the most high-profile human rights problems of any major oil company. Many believe it has to do with the fact that James, like Karl Rove, just doesn't seem to know how to finesse problems before they grow to such a point that they begin to create major risks for ownership. Some observers have opined that there is a clear parallel between James' insensitivity and clumsiness and Rove's divisive and aggressive tactics.

This lack of finesse may help explain why in the present case, Chevron finds itself on trial in San Francisco (of all places!) for helping the Nigerian military kill peaceful, apparently unarmed, protesters who had occupied an oil platform. It also helps explain why Chevron's environmental problems in Ecuador's rainforest have grown to the point where the company faces a $16.3 billion potential liability, according to an independent court-appointed expert. Chevron is also under attack for owning a pipeline in Burma that generates close to $1 billion annually for that country's brutal military regime.

James' response to these problems is simple -- he just bludgeons all of the company's opposition. He has repeatedly relied upon the same strategic playbook -- "deny everything, admit nothing, attack, attack, attack" -- each time Chevron is confronted with its human rights violations. In Ecuador, the court-appointed expert found 428 people had died from exposure to oil contamination and two of the company's lawyers are under criminal indictment for lying about the results of an earlier remediation. Yet to James and his group, everyone who challenges Chevron on human rights grounds is either a pirate, a liar, or a con man. (Larry Bowoto has been repeatedly described as a "pirate" throughout the case; Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer in the Ecuador environmental case, was called an "environmental con man" by Chevron earlier this year after winning the Goldman Award, the environmental movement's version of the Nobel Prize.)

So the question is: Is James acting in the best interests of Chevron's shareholders? The fact that this is even a serious question tells one how far Chevron has fallen in recent years. We now live in a world where globalization makes issues regarding human rights, the environment, and corporate responsibility directly related to a corporation's competitiveness. While Chevron is faced with increasing human rights problems, competitors BP and Shell have significant, comprehensive human rights standards in place. As oil companies are forced to negotiate exploration agreements with increasingly sophisticated governments, Chevron's reputation will necessarily affect its competitive standing -- since communities will look to partner with corporations that can generate the most profit while causing the least amount of environmental devastation. After all, given the recent mandate spelled out in the recent election results, with Democrats now in control of Washington and the country is hungering for a new energy policy, having Bush Administration retreads like James and Haynes run an oil company's legal department seems at best bizarre and at worst foolish.

In regard to the Ecuador case, James once told law students at Berkeley that Chevron will fight "until hell freezes over, and then skate on the ice". While this is a suspect stance for any lawyer to take in public, it is even more disturbing when viewed as an aspect of James' overall philosophy. His inability to head off legal disputes has cost the company millions in fees and has left it with huge potential financial and public relations liabilities.

Regardless of how the Bowoto trial turns out (and Chevron should win the legal case -- no matter what the venue, their resources alone should all but guarantee their victory), the very existence of this standoff just miles from the company's global headquarters must be seen as a huge PR disaster for Chevron. It remains to be seen if the leadership ultimately responsible to the shareholders is taking note of the way that Charles James has masterminded this case.

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Bowoto v. Chevron – The Flamingo Defense:

Bowoto v. Chevron continued on Wednesday, the second full day of the trial, with the examination of the plaintiff's expert and two witnesses for the plaintiffs, including the beginning of the questioning of lead plaintiff Larry Bowoto. For a better understanding of a brief background on the case and to understand what precisely is at stake in this landmark human rights case, take a look at Daniel Firger's posts here and here.

This morning I watched the beginning development of a very specific narrative thread by Chevron – the underlying claim that they did not know, and could not know, that the Nigerian military forces would flagrantly violate human rights in the manner that the plaintiffs allege.

This thread began to emerge as the plaintiffs finished examining their expert, Dr. Michael Watts. Dr. Watts characterized the military government of Nigeria in the 1990s as signaling a general "descent into flagrant authoritarianism" and testified regarding the flagrant human rights violations that the military forces of Nigeria had committed in other areas of the nation and the extensive media and non-governmental organization coverage that those abuses had attracted. Dr. Watts cited a wide-variety of sources regarding these violations, from Nigerian media reports, to Amnesty International reports, to U.S. State Departments assessments.

However, during the subsequent cross-examination, Chevron's attorneys sought to cast doubt on Dr. Watts' contention that the Nigerian military forces were widely known to be the perpetrators of massive human rights violations. The lawyers took great pains to illustrate that the human rights violations referred to in Dr. Watts' report came from a location several states away from where the Bowoto incident occurred – inferring that because the violations were so remote Chevron could not possibly have known about them.

However, the basic assertion is ridiculous. The idea that Chevron, an international oil-conglomerate that is sophisticated enough to operate in nations around the world and sophisticated enough to remain as a constant presence during shifting governmental power in Nigeria, easily surviving military coup after military coup, could not have discovered what the U.S. State Department was able to include in one of their general assessments is laughable. With a long-term presence on the ground in Nigeria, with at least two separate local offices and over two thousand employees, it is impossible to imagine that Chevron would have no idea that the military forces were, at times, something less than professional in their exercise of force. After all, even your average American with no special knowledge could tell you that African military forces aren't generally known for their restraint and respect for human dignity.

But fabricated naïveté have long been the backstop to Chevron's activities around the world, serving as the company's first line of defense against any allegations of outrageous conduct levied against the corporation, employing what I'll call the "flamingo defense" (for the ability of the company to stick it's head in the sand whenever trouble comes around). Here the corporation is arguing that it couldn't have known that the uncontrollable Nigerian forces were dangerous to send into this "nervous" situation. In Burma that company has long argued that it couldn't have known that the military government Chevron was propping up has been one of the most brutal human rights violators on Earth. In Ecuador the company has long alleged that it could not have known that applying environmental standards that were inappropriate for the sensitive ecosystem of the rainforest would have such devastating effects.

At the end of the day, Chevron is again recycling old tricks. As I wrote about yesterday, it appears that every time the corporation's back is to the wall, they reach to the same bag and pull out the same tools, pivoting to the attack along the same tired themes. Their constant position seems to be borrowed from the Karl Rove playbook of "Deny everything. Admit nothing. Attack, attack, attack." But maybe that is to be expected – Chevron's legal department is dominated by Bush administration loyalists, including Charles James and famous author of the "torture memo", William Haynes.

The trial will be continuing in coming days, with lead plaintiff Larry Bowoto launching into the heart of his testimony tomorrow morning.

I'll keep you updated.

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Landmark Human Rights Trial Continues – Opening Statements and More:

Opening arguments began in the landmark Bowoto v. Chevron case today, with the plaintiffs launching into an emotional outline of the events that led to the eventual shooting of several Nigerian unarmed protestors (check out Dan Firger's blog for brief summary of the background of the case). The lead attorney for the plaintiffs – Dan Stormer – seemed to get choked up when describing the manner in which he asserted the Nigerian soldiers, whom were paid by Chevron, shot the villagers. Among those shot was lead plaintiff, Larry Bowoto, whom Stormer said was holding up his hands to show he was unarmed when he was shot. Heavy stuff.

But Chevron's lawyers were not to be outdone. Defendant's lead counsel, Robert Mittelsteadt, lead the jury through a lengthy, step-by-step explanation of Chevron's version of the trial, complete with sophisticated 3-D animation presentations of what the oil derrick looked like. Mittelsteadt spent his opening statement describing the protestors as sophisticated criminals and sea pirates who executed a commando-style raid where they stormed the oil barge, taking radio stations and heliports to prevent anyone from leaving the platform or communicating with the outside world. He described a situation where the villagers were acting on their threats to raid the platform and hold the workers of the oil derricks hostage, creating a "nervous situation" that was a "ticking time bomb" when the workers wanted to go home to their families. The bottom line, Mittelsteadt said, was that this case is about an American company's right and responsibility to protect its workers from threats.

But that statement is ridiculous. Of course American companies have a right and responsibility to protect their workers from harm – no reasonable person would argue that a company has no right or responsibility to protect its employees. The question isn't if they can protect their workers but instead if a company can kill unarmed protestors and ignore basic human rights in doing so. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said when addressing concerns of land owners worried about productivity during the Great Depression, "I may not be a lawyer, and I do not know much about the law, but I do know that you don't shoot your neighbor for trespass". Chevron is basically arguing that unarmed and peaceful protestors can be shot for merely trespassing on property that they claim is causing environmental contamination that is killing them.

And Chevron knows this – and they know that the soldiers working for them were out of control. During the plaintiff's opening statement Mr. Stormer showed the jury an email from one of Chevron's local directors referencing an incident from 1997, a year before Larry Bowoto and the other villagers were shot, in which the Nigerian soldiers that Chevron employs shot and killed a schoolteacher. In this communiqué the director calls the soldiers "uncontrollable" and suggests that Chevron purchase rubber bullets to equip the soldiers with, so as to avoid any other unnecessary killings. Needless to say, Chevron neglected to take any action to either reign in the out of control soldiers or equip them with rubber bullets, setting the stage for the tragedy on the oil derrick that day.

So now Chevron's lawyers have spent their day characterizing the protestors as criminals and sea pirates who were intending to cause harm to their property. Hell, even Mr. Mittelsteadt basically admitted that the protestors may not have been armed, stating at one point that "an oil derrick is a very dangerous place for untrained people. If they turned a valve the wrong way, it could cause an explosion." So, I guess, since there was a danger in having untrained personnel on the oil derrick Chevron decided to solve that problem by having the untrained people shot. Hmm – not sure if that really fits with Mr. Mittelsteadt's assertion that Chevron didn't want anyone to be hurt.

But this tactic is old hat for Chevron – when confronted with individuals attempting to call out the corporation for human rights abuses, Chevron pivots to the attack, characterizing anyone standing up to them as greedy, money-grubbing, and out for a quick buck. Or worse, as in this case, Chevron calls them pirates and human rights violators themselves. They've used the same process in the long-running environmental litigation in Ecuador, where they've called Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza (the recipients of the Nobel Prize of the environmental movement, the prestigious Goldman Award and the recipients of a CNN Heroes Award) "environmental con men" who are attempting to embezzle money from Chevron. The corporation conveniently ignores or discounts the scientific evidence gathered in Ecuador over 16 years, including the assessment of an independent, court-appointed expert who found that Chevron was responsible for massive toxic contamination and faces a $16.3 billion dollar liability as a result.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed in plaintiff counsel's failure to see this coming. In their emotional opening statement this morning, Mr. Stormer failed to effectively preempt Chevron's basic point that Chevron was exercising its basic right and responsibility to defend its workers. Rather than simply highlighting that basic argument and emphasizing that Chevron has a right to defend their employees but cannot simply shoot unarmed protestors wholesale, the plaintiffs instead focused on the powerful emotion of their narrative, almost as if they were expecting that simply standing up and saying that Chevron shot unarmed people would carry the day for them. As a lawyer, I just don't think that is a sufficient response to Chevron's argument – you have to anticipate the arguments from the opposing side and explain how they are insufficient to address your point.

I thought that Chevron's lawyers got the better of it this morning – I hope that the counsel for the plaintiffs will start anticipating Chevron's responses as we move forward. I'm eagerly anticipating some drama in the days to come.

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Landmark Human Rights Litigation has Chevron on the Run

Just in: A landmark human rights trial, Bowoto v. Chevron, has finally begun in federal court in San Francisco, and a handful of Nigerian villagers have Chevron's corporate brain trust scrambling to defend itself.

[Case background excerpted from Firger's blog on the case from this morning on the Huffington Post - Landmark Human Rights Trial Bowoto v. Chevron Set To Begin October 27]

Bowoto v. Chevron began in 1998 when Larry Bowoto and approximately 100 other community members staged a peaceful protest at one of Chevron's offshore oil platforms, demanding a meeting between company representatives and village elders to negotiate for the job training and education programs they had been promised in exchange for the severe environmental harms they had been forced to endure. They were unarmed, and after receiving word that Chevron would attend a meeting in a nearby village the following day, they prepared to leave the platform peacefully.

Before they could do so, three company helicopters carrying Nigerian military personnel swooped down on the platform and opened fire, killing two people and injuring several others, including Bowoto. Though Chevron claims the soldiers were firing in self defense, at least one of the men killed was shot in the back (my edit - AMW). Allegedly acting at the direction of Chevron, soldiers detained and tortured several other protestors, after which company personnel paid them for their services.

Bowoto and his co-plaintiffs filed their suit in 1999 in United States District Court in San Francisco. After nearly a decade of legal wrangling, the case now stands as an important milestone in the history of international human rights law:, a U.S. company could potentially be held liable in U.S. courts for gross human rights abuses committed in their overseas operations.

[End excerpt]

The case finally began today, and it appeared that Chevron was feeling the heat. Chevron turned out in force for today's first hearing, dispatching at least a dozen different lawyers and public relations personnel, including Vice-President and General Counsel Charles James, to the courthouse to combat the threat posed by these villagers. It was a surreal experience sitting in the courtroom and watching the contrast between the plaintiffs and the defendants: Larry Bowoto and his compatriots sitting calmly in their multicolored traditional garb contrasting sharply with Charles James and his lawyers and their expensive suits.

And the Chevron P.R. machine was in full swing, with familiar pro-Chevron blogger "Zennie62" attending the trial and meeting with Chevron's P.R. people immediately – at least until Judge Susan Illston issued a gag-order ordering both sides to refrain from issuing any statements or commenting on the case (let's see if that keeps Zennie quiet…Zennie has long been known to be a mouthpiece for Chevron in the 'blogosphere' and he has been under attack along with San Francisco writer Pat Murphy for being paid by Chevron to post blogs that mysteriously get google-bombed to the top of search engines. Neither Chevron, Murphy or Zennie has ever denied they get paid by Chevron even though they don't disclose such payments on their blogs.)

Judge Illston's gag order was the source of the biggest drama of the day – in a stunning setback for Chevron, Judge Illston forced Chevron's lead attorney to admit that Chevron has been paying Google to give priority to the website that give's Chevron's side of the story (purchasing "sponsored links" so that anyone searching "bowoto" or "bowoto chevron" would have the search send the user to Chevron's website first), then ordering Chevron to take down their links and stop any effort to manipulate search results by paying for sponsored-links, indicating that she was "disturbed" by Chevron's attempt to manipulate public perception of the trial.

I don't have any connection to Nigeria, and I don't have any ties to the plaintiffs, but as lawyer involved in the Amazon Defense Coalition, I think it's important to keep an eye on Chevron's rising human rights problems. Unfortunately, the tactics that Chevron has employed in this case – deny, delay, confuse, deny, attack, delay, and deny again – are all too familiar to anyone who has watched Chevron's attempts to deal with their rising human rights problems around the globe. From Nigeria to Ecuador to Burma, it is becoming clear that Chevron has a major problem when it comes to human rights and environmental policies – hopefully cases like Bowoto and the ongoing litigation in Ecuador will force the company to finally realize how out of step it is with the rest of the world and even its competitors in the oil industry, many of whom have developed sensible human rights policies while Chevron falls behind. The Amazon Defense Coalition released a press release on Monday about precisely this issue.

In any event, this case is just getting started – we'll be keeping an eye on it for the rest of the week. Stay tuned, and we'll keep you abreast of the drama as this landmark human rights trial unfolds…

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