Shocking New Video Exposes Chevron's Crimes & Fraud In Ecuador

Take 15 minutes of your day and watch this shocking new video that exposes Chevron's crimes and fraud in Ecuador.

Chevron's lawyers, lobbyists, and public relations firms have tried everything to distract attention away from the suffering of the Ecuadorians who have been forced to live with the contamination Chevron left in the rainforest after exploring for oil from 1964 to 1990. Chevron has even accused the Ecuadorians of fraud in an attempt to turn its victims into criminals.

This video reminds us what the lawsuit is all about -- the families who have lost loved ones to cancer and other oil-related illnesses all because Chevron used the most inexpensive methods to extract oil to maximize its profits.

The True Story of Chevron's Ecuador Disaster from Amazon Watch on Vimeo.

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Wood’s Private Life Questioned, But His Public Choices Raise Real Questions

For the first time in Tiger Woods' career his private life is being closely scrutinized and his unwillingness to discuss what happened in his home criticized. Much ink has been used to debate what impact this scandal is having on his corporate partners, specifically Chevron, who entered into a five-year contract with the Tiger Woods' Foundation last year and had expected him to attend its golf tournament this week.

But, greater attention should be paid to Tiger's willingness enter into a relationship with Chevron itself, and the impact its had with the oil giant has had on the countries and people suffering from Chevron's abuse of the environment and human life across the globe.

This moment of media chaos may be the perfect time for Woods to reassess his relationship with this particular multinational for about 18 billion good reasons. That's the number of gallons of toxic waste that Texaco, now Chevron, intentionally dumped into the Ecuadorian rainforest from 1964 to 1990, contaminating the food and water supplies of the indigenous groups and farmer communities living there. Texaco built over 900 gigantic, unlined oil pits to store toxic waste permanently. The pits continue to seep into the groundwater and leech into the rivers and streams used by the 200,000 people living in the region.

This humanitarian crisis created by Woods' partner decimated the pristine rainforest in the Ecuadorian Amazon, one of the most bio diverse regions on earth and continues to contaminate to this day.

Kerry Kennedy, human rights activist and daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, recently visited the area and called it "Chevron's Chernobyl." [See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-kennedy/chevron-and-cultural-geno_b_346257.html]

Experts estimate over 1,000 people have died from cancer, and thousands more suffer from respiratory illnesses, skin disease and other medical problems. Women living near the oil sites are 2.5 times as likely to have spontaneous abortions than women in other parts of Ecuador and incidents of childhood leukemia are three times higher than the national average. Children are born with deformities and, upon bathing in the contaminated water, develop painful skin rashes over their entire bodies.

Yet Chevron refuses to take responsibility for the deliberate contamination of the region designed to maximize profit at the time of its operation.

Chevron has a long history of human rights abuse across the globe and has shown no remorse for the Toxic legacy it inherited in Ecuador. EarthRights International has called on Woods to no longer partner with Chevron as a result of the company's criminal environmental practices and human rights abuses abroad. [See http://www.metro.us/us/article/2009/12/02/05/3635-82/index.xml]

Looks like Tiger's relationship with Chevron may actually be the most harmful one for the mega-athlete's reputation. At a time when Tiger might need to do a bit of rehab on his public image, he should be cutting ties with an oil-giant that is embroiled in a rising tide of human rights problems around the globe. If Chevron insists on continuing to do business in a way that violates the environmental integrity of the communities in which it operates around the world, than Tiger should insist that his foundation disassociate itself with the oil company in every way.

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Science Doesn’t Lie. Or Does It?

Katie Bezrouch over at Imagine 2050 hit on an interesting thread last week: Chevron has apparently commissioned "scientific studies" to create findings supporting their analysis that there has been no harm to the Ecuador region that the company devastated. The catch is that these studies are apparently funded by the big oil company and are done by a company that shares a member of its board of directors with Chevron. Not exactly independent research. Bezrouch writes:

"According to Judith Kimerling (2007 recipient of the Parker Gentry Award for Conservation Biology), "…from 1972 until it left Ecuador in 1992, Texaco intentionally dumped more than 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the region and was responsible for 16.8 million gallons of crude oil spilling from the main pipeline into the forest." This pollution has caused massive amounts of eco-degradation and human health problems. There has been increased cancer rates in oil producing villages and higher miscarriage rates. The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health attributes this to living in the proximity of a contaminated water source, and it just so happens that the streams in the region contain more than 280 times more oil chemicals than European communities would allow.

But Chevron has a different perspective. Their analysis of Ecuador data reveals no increased cancer levels in the oil region. They fabricated this information by funding a study of their own called "Cancer Mortality and Oil Production in the Amazon Region of Ecuador, 1990-2005," key word being "funding". The study was conducted by three scientists at a consulting firm called Exponent. When I went to the their website and found that the veteran member of the Exponent Board of Directors (Samuel H. Armacost) is also a board member of the Chevron Corporation, I couldn't help myself from laughing out loud.

Anyone with a critical eye should be able to see right through Chevron's junk science. An independent court-appointed expert found that 100% of Chevron's former well sites are contaminated with illegal levels of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons. Most all of the samples contain well known carcinogens, or, cancer causing agents.

Makes you wonder exactly how reliable that data is.

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Bloomberg Article Details Health Impact of Chevron's Ecuadorian Legacy

We've written at some length about the tremendous damage that Chevron's activities in Ecuador have caused to the local communities in Ecuador in this blog. Well, Bloomberg released a very interesting story - "Texaco Toxic Past Haunts Chevron as Judgment Looms" - today covering the health impact of Chevron's actions in Ecuador. The Bloomberg reporters really dug into the issue and provided independent verification by multiple and credible third party sources of much of what the plaintiffs suing Chevron for Texaco's actions have been alleging. The reporters cited oncologists, the court-appointed expert's report, physician Miguel San Sebastian, Mike Brune from the Rainforest Action Network, the Havoc Laboratory verifying toxin levels, former Texaco engineer Jorge Viteri, and a report published by the Ecuadorian government from before the trial began. This is the first mainstream news article I've seen that really digs deep into the cancer issue, and it is heartbreaking to read about the deaths that Texaco's substandard operations caused in Ecuador.

The article is worth taking a look at over at Bloomberg.com.

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