BP Held Accountable For Deaths & Oil Spill; Chevron Remains Fugitive From Justice

Today BP got hit with four arrests for manslaughter and lying to Congress and $3 to $5 billion in federal fines for the ACCIDENTAL oil spill that resulted in 11 deaths and an estimated $40 billion plus in damages to individuals and local businesses. The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to announce a settlement deal later today. It will not include civil claims under the Clean Water Act and other legislation,  pending private civil claims and state claims for economic loss, which means the total cost to BP could be $40 to $60 billion for a spill that was remediated, at least on the surface, in a few months.  See here.

This news is in stark contrast to the legal battle against Chevron for massive oil contamination in Ecuador. Chevron has refused to pay a $19 billion judgment awarded last year by an Ecuador court, forcing the Ecuadorians to file lawsuits in other countries to seize company assets as payment.  

Consider this:

1) The damages in the Ecuadorian rainforest was intentional, not accidental. Chevron designed, built and operated its drilling system in Ecuador to pollute in order to maximize its profits there.

2) Chemical toxins and pure crude have been leeching into the soil and waterways for five decades, while Chevron has fought the Ecuadorians' lawsuit for damages for 20 years. U.S. courts forced the Ecuadorians to try their case in Ecuador, delaying a judgment by a decade. BP cleaned its contamination in a few months.

3) At least 1,400 people have died from cancer and thousands more have oil-related illnesses resulting from Chevron's contamination.  The BP spill resulted in 11 deaths and damage to wildlife and other environmental impacts.

4) Chevron dumped 16 billion gallons of oil and toxic water into the soil and waterways and built 900 huge unlined pits to store pure crude and toxic water. The BP spill occurred off shore and is not believed to be a threat (at least for now) to humans and wildlife.

5) Chevron, U.S. oil analysts and the U.S. media laughed at early damage estimates against Chevron ranging from $16 to $27 billion in Ecuador. BP will likely pay up to $60 billion in damages.

It's hard not to conclude that a U.S. life is just worth more than an Ecuadorian life. BP is being held accountable for its mistake, but Chevron remains a fugitive from justice for its intentional crimes. 

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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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Chevron's Troubles

Chevron is facing troubles in a number of oil-rich countries, including Nigeria, Brazil, and, of course, Ecuador.

Here are three articles worth reading that appeared this weekend:

Chevron's Amazon-sized gamble on Latin America

The Chevron spill off the coast of Brazil is not so much about the amount of oil spilled but about Chevron's reckless behavior that results from the company's arrogance -- similar to its misconduct in Ecuador.

Excerpts: "The prosecutor told Reuters the more than $11 billion civil award sought against Chevron is not based on a clear assessment of damages from the spill. The figure is meant to send a message.

"'Energy companies operating here need to know that reckless behavior will cost them,' (the prosecutor) said.

"Chevron's worst-case scenario damages from Brazil and Ecuador could top the company's $26.9 billion in 2011 profits....

"Chevron's deputy comptroller, Rex Mitchell, warned in U.S. District Court last year that the Ecuadorians' collection effort could 'cause irreparable injury to Chevron's business reputation and business relationships.'

"Chevron may be spending $200 million per year in legal fees related to Ecuador alone, the plaintiff lawyers estimated. Chevron declined to comment on legal fees."

Chevron: Fire On Gas Rig Extinguished

Nigerians have been pleading with Chevron to help them following a fire on a gas rig that took over a month to put out, but Chevron has done very little.

Excerpts: "Residents here complained of air, water, and fish that taste of kerosene as the plume of smoke hovered within sight offshore.

"They're asking Chevron to relocate the approximately 10,000 people in the surrounding community--a request that cuts against long-standing religious ties to land in Nigeria's oil-rich marshland.

"Mostly, residents say their livelihood--fishing--has been spoiled by the gas fire.

"'The gas is inside the fish,' the youth chairman for the village, Bravely Salvage said. 'After eating the fish you feel like somebody who drunk diesel, you feel dizzy...some of us collapse.'"

Hits, and Misses, in a War on Bribery

The Ecuadorians believe Chevron is in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by offering what is essentially a $1 billion bribe to the Government of Ecuador for the Yasuni project and a small cleanup effort -- but only if the Government steps in and blocks the enforcement of the $18 billion judgment against Chevron.

Excerpts: "Enacted in 1977, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits American companies and foreign companies whose securities are traded on exchanges here from bribing foreign officials to attract or keep business. For many years, there were few prosecutions under the act. In 2003, for instance, not a single person was charged.

"But in the last four years, a total of 58 companies have paid a combined $3.74 billion to settle such corruption charges. Since 2009, some 67 people have been charged, 20 are still awaiting trial or are at large, and 42 have been convicted, some from charges prior to 2009. A total of 22 have been acquitted or had charges dismissed.

"Lanny A. Breuer, the assistant United States attorney general who has stepped up enforcement actions under the act, said he saw no reason to change course. In fact, he is expanding his staff — and his range of potential targets.

“'We have to be willing to take cases that we would be willing to lose,' Mr. Breuer said in an interview. 'We can’t just pick the easy cases.'

"Even more, he sees himself on the right side of history, especially given the outcry against government corruption in the Arab world and elsewhere.

“'This is not the time for the United States to be condoning corruption,' Mr. Breuer said. 'We are a world leader and we want to do everything to make sure that business is less corrupt, not more.'”



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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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