Chevron Faces Another Conflict With Key Latin American Country

Brazil Oil Spill Raises Questions About Company’s Respect For Local Laws

Chevron faces yet another conflict with a key Latin American country where it has a sizable investment – Brazil Chevron is currently embroiled in a huge conflict in the largest country in South America related to a huge oil spill off the coast near Rio de Janeiro. If Chevron’s flouting of local laws in Brazil is as flagrant as it has been in Ecuador, then it could lead to open warfare between Chevron and two Latin American countries.

What's happening in Brazil sounds very similar to what happened in Ecuador, where the company is attempting to evade an $18 billion judgment for massive oil contamination in the rainforest that has cost thousands of lives and devastated an area roughly the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island.

In Brazil, the Federal Police is investigating Chevron’s statements about the amount of oil spilled, the cause of the spill and the containment. Other government officials and environmentalists are questioning Chevron’s estimates. Also, it appears the spill has not been contained, even though Chevron said it had been. In other words, many Brazilians believe Chevron is lying to them.

Fabio Scliar of the Brazilian Federal Police said the information provided by Chevron did not match the visual evidence at the site. "Initially, the reports do not correspond to reality," said Scliar. "I want to understand what's happening."

Brazil’s Energy Minister Edison Lobao said: “If Chevron is not doing what it should (to contain the spill) it will be severely punished.”

In Ecuador, Chevron’s U.S. executives have declared political warfare on Ecuador's government as part of a strategy to discredit the $18 billion judgment for the cleanup of massive oil contamination left behind two decades ago -- one that experts believe dwarfs the size of BP's Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil giant is paying several U.S. corporate law firms, lobbyists and public relations gurus hundreds of millions of dollars to foment open conflict with Ecuador's government as part of a global strategy to escape justice. It has created the unusual specter of a major American oil company deliberately provoking a diplomatic row with an oil-producing Latin American country that is a key U.S. trading partner.

The stepped-up political strategy comes at a time when Chevron's legal prospects in the case, which is being heard in the Amazon town of Lago Agrio, have considerably weakened. Ecuadorian citizens originally filed the claims in 1993 in New York but a U.S. judge shifted the case to Ecuador in 2002 at Chevron's request. At the time, Chevron heaped lavish praise on Ecuador's court system. When evidence began to show the extent of the contamination, Chevron declared it would never pay a damage award.

In September, a U.S. appeals court blocked Chevron from using an injunction from a U.S. trial judge to enjoin enforcement of the Ecuadorian judgment in any of the dozens of countries where the oil giant operates. Separately, the Ecuador court in February found Chevron liable and imposed $18 billion in damages, which the plaintiffs are appealing as too low.

In any event, the message from Ecuador is simple -- when it comes to Chevron, Brazil should beware.

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Wikileaks Cable Reveals Chevron Tried To Buy Ecuadorian Government Support To Kill Contamination Lawsuit With A Few "Social Projects" In Amazon

Courthouse News in an article about the Wikileaks cables from the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador revealed Chevron's hypocrisy in accusing the Ecuadorians of "conspiring" with Ecuadorian government officials in the long-running legal battle in the Amazon rainforest. Seems Chevron was "conspiring" with the U.S. Embassy. In his closing, legal reporter Adam Klasfeld reminds readers that even the highly-prejudiced Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan recognized that Chevron does not have "clean" hands. The surfacing of the Wikileaks' cables comes on the heels of a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision that rebuked Kaplan in his effort to block the Ecuadorians from enforcing their $18 billion judgment in Ecuador.

Here's the story, and below are a few excerpts:

Reporter Adam Klasfeld wrote:

"Chevron tried to shake off multibillion environmental claims in Ecuador by lobbying government officials, even as it blasted opponents for allegedly playing to the courts' corrupt and political side, according to diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks…."

".... in a cable to the U.S. secretary of state, former U.S. Ambassador Linda Jewell wrote that Chevron had begun to "quietly explore" a deal with the government of Ecuador (GOE) to make the case disappear. (The cable read:) 'Chevron had begun to quietly explore with senior GOE officials whether it could implement a series of social projects in the concession area in exchange for GOE support for ending the case, but now that the expert has released a huge estimate for alleged damage, it might be hard for the GOE to go that route, even if it has the ability to bring the case to a close,' Jewell wrote on April 7, 2008…."

"....The Wikileaks cables also show that Chevron did not always have misgivings about the Ecuadorean courts. One rallying cry Chevron has used to undermine the Lago Agrio trial is a video that allegedly implicates the presiding judge, Juan Nuñez, in $3 million bribery scheme. Chevron has claimed it received videos unsolicited and published them over the Internet on Aug. 31, 2008….

"Two days after Chevron published the Nuñez footage, then-U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges sent a cable to the secretary reporting that Chevron lawyers phoned the Embassy to give diplomats a 'heads up' about the disclosure. Ecuador ultimately expelled Hodges this past April for disclosures she made in unrelated cables obtained by Wikileaks. While denying wrongdoing, Nuñez stepped down from the case to avoid the appearance of impropriety. But cracks quickly surfaced in Chevron's allegations. Summarizing hours of footage, The New York Times later reported, 'No bribes were shown on the tapes.'"

"Hodges explained in the cable that the 'tapes were recorded clandestinely by Diego Borja, an Ecuadorian who had performed work for Chevron as a logistics contractor, and Wayne Hansen, a U.S. citizen with no ties to Chevron.' Although Chevron has distanced itself from the cameramen, Courthouse News discovered emails currently under a court seal that show Hansen contacted the company's investigator months before the release of the videos. Hansen claimed in the email that Chevron duped him, and he threatened to ask Judge Nuñez for forgiveness if the company did not contact him."

"More than a year later, he sent another email to Borja's investigative firm. Hansen claimed that he was in Peru, to which he had apparently fled in defiance of a subpoena that would compel an explanation of the videos. Hodges, the ambassador, told Washington that Ecuadorean government officials were immediately skeptical and indignant about the recordings….."

".... In a follow-up cable sent about a week later, Hodges said that Ecuador's prosecutor general called on the (U.S.) attorney general to 'initiate proceedings against Chevron in the United States, presumably for violations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.' The Ecuadorean government has not backed off from allegations that Chevron orchestrated a 'judicial entrapment' scheme, and it continues to ask a U.S. federal judge to unseal the Borja and Hansen communications."

"In one of the first discovery proceedings Chevron initiated last year in New York, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan interrupted counsel for the Ecuadoreans as the lawyer assailed Chevron's litigation strategy.

'I am not naive,' Kaplan said. 'I don't assume that anyone's hands in this are clean.'"

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Movie Industry, Media Outlets Line Up Against Chevron Over Film Battle

Chevron's latest legal maneuver to avoid its potential $27.3 billion liability for illegal dumping in Ecuador's rainforest is startling. The company is now trying to violate the 1^st Amendment rights of filmmaker Joe Berlinger by forcing him to turn over more than 600 hours of private video outtakes from his film Crude. But Chevron's actions have not gone unnoticed, and virtually every major U.S. media company – and dozens of luminaries – have come to Berlinger's defense, asking the courts to stop Chevron's abuses. Take a look at the press release from the Amazon Defense Coalition explaining the issue below:

Leonardo DiCaprio, Woody Allen, Academy of Motion Pictures Join Filmmaker In Showdown with Chevron over Ecuador Footage

Robert Redford, Bill Moyers, Mikhail Gorbachev, Trudie Styler Also Line Up Against Oil Giant In Legal Battle
Key First Amendment Case Attracts Wide Attention

Amazon Defense Coalition
14 July 2010 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or karen [at] hintoncommunications.com

New York, NY – Leonardo DiCaprio, Woody Allen, Robert Redford, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have joined forces with celebrated filmmaker Joe Berlinger as he faces a key legal showdown Wednesday with Chevron over its attempt to access 600 hours of private video footage from the film CRUDE that documents the oil giant's massive environmental contamination of Ecuador's Amazon.

"The battle lines have been drawn between a major oil company accused of human rights abuses and the rights of the journalistic and artistic communities to expose corporate misconduct," said Ilann Maazel, who represents 30,000 rainforest plaintiffs who have sued Chevron for discharging billions of gallons of toxic waste onto their ancestral lands.

"Chevron committed wrongdoing in the Amazon with an environmental impact far worse than that the BP disaster," said Maazel. "This case is about Chevron's use of ill-gotten profits to intimidate a filmmaker who captured the company's misconduct on tape.'

A federal appeals court in New York will hear arguments Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. over a decision by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in May that ordered Berlinger to turn over to Chevron his entire body of outtakes from CRUDE, or roughly 600 hours of footage. Kaplan's decision has been met with widespread criticism as hundreds of journalists, actors, filmmakers, and writers – many of them Academy Award winners – have joined virtually every major U.S. media company in supporting Berlinger.

The list of notables reads like a "Who's Who" of the arts and journalist communities, including Redford, Bill Moyers, Norman Lear, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, and Trudie Styler in addition to DiCaprio and Allen.

Also supporting Berlinger are three dozen of the largest media companies in America, including The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, Dow Jones, the Associated Press, HBO, the Washington Post, the Hearst Newspapers, the Daily News, and the Gannett Company. The media companies filed a brief in which they noted that Chevron seeks to subpoena the "largest amount of film outtakes" in American history.

Also backing Berlinger are the Sundance Institute, the Director's Guild of America, the Writer's Guild of America, the International Documentary Association, the Tribeca Film Institute, Latino Public Broadcasting, and the Center for Asian American Media, among others. In a separate brief, they argued that Kaplan's order will make it "nearly impossible for filmmakers who report on controversial issues to obtain candid interviews."

A letter from the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said it fears Kaplan's decision "could have far-reaching, potentially devastating consequences ... for the bond of trust between journalist and subject..." Redford wrote in The Huffington Post that the "potential ramifications of [Kaplan's decision] for the journalist community, film world and society in general are both shocking and profound."

Gorbachev, a Nobel Prize Laureate, released a letter from the Berlin-based Cinema for Peace Foundation (where CRUDE won a major award last year) that said Kaplan's ruling endangers "independent documentary filmmaking and the work of investigative journalists everywhere."

For its part, Chevron has attracted the support of Dole – a company that like Chevron faces accusations that it committed crimes and violated human rights abroad by exposing banana field workers to toxic chemicals. Dole, represented by the same U.S. law firm as Chevron, had previously sued a Swedish documentary filmmaker who investigated and documented the pesticide poisoning of Dole workers in Nicaragua.

Berlinger shot CRUDE, which won 22 festival awards and premiered at Sundance, between 2005 and 2008. The film chronicles three years of the Ecuador trial phase of the 17-year legal battle between indigenous groups and Chevron. The case against Chevron is considered the largest environmental class action in the world; damages are estimated at up to $27.3 billion.

Berlinger is arguing that his footage is covered by First Amendment privileges that safeguard the ability of reporters and filmmakers to play their traditional watchdog role to expose corporate and governmental abuse. Chevron claims Berlinger's footage is likely to contain evidence of misconduct that can help in its defense.

Chevron's pursuit of the footage is a "sideshow" meant to intimidate journalists and distract shareholder attention from the company's enormous liability for illegal dumping in Ecuador, lawyers for the indigenous and farmer communities suing the company said.

"Chevron's management is now trying to run over the Constitution just like it ran over the rights of indigenous groups in the Amazon," said Maazel.

Chevron has admitted in court that Texaco (now Chevron) deliberately discharged billions of gallons of toxic wastewater into the streams and rivers of Ecuador while it was the exclusive operator of a large oil concession from 1964 to 1990. Evidence before the court indicates that cancer rates and other oil-related diseases in the area where Texaco operated have skyrocketed.

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Shan: Chevron Loses a Round in First Amendment Battle over Ecuador Film Footage

The below post appeared on ChevroninEcuador.com today – take a look below or after the jump:

Victory for First Amendment, Filmmakers, & Amazon Communities in Battle Vs. Chevron Over Ecuador Footage!

Chevron suffered a significant legal setback in the courts today in its sprawling cynical effort to evade accountability for its environmental devastation in Ecuador

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger will get an Appeals Court hearing of his appeal of the lower court decision ordering him to turn over 600+ hours of raw footage shot during the making of his award-winning documentary CRUDE. The ruling by the three-judge panel of the Circuit Court also 'stays' the subpoena ordering the production of the footage while Berlinger's appeal is pending.

This is excellent news for supporters of the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment, and documentary filmmakers and investigative journalists– and everyone that benefits from the work done by these people to shine a spotlight on issues of social and political importance. In other words, this is great news for everyone.

Furthermore, this is a victory for those who have dared to discover the truth about Chevron's environmental disaster in Ecuador, and the communities struggling to hold the oil giant accountable.

Chevron's lawyers from corporate law behemoth Gibson Dunnhope to mine the CRUDE outtakes for any material that they might find useful to their relentless legal and public relations schemes to discredit the plaintiffs, their attorneys and supporters, and the courts in Ecuador.

In response to the ruling, Mr. Berlinger's lawyer Maura Wogan told The Wrap:

"Today's decision signals that the appeals court takes seriously the rights of investigative journalists like Joe Berlinger."

And Joe Berlinger had this to say:

"I am delighted that the appellate court seems to understand the significant public interest in my appeal being heard. The stay that was granted today will allow us to argue the merits of our position before the Court."

The ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals vindicates the position of the growing number of high-profile supporters who have spoken out for Berlinger.

On Friday, film legend and environmental activist Robert Redford penned a powerful opinion article in the Huffington Post, entitled 'Joe Berlinger vs. Chevron: Why We Must All Defend Independent Filmmaking'.

Redford's argument couldn't be more straightforward:

Filmmakers like Joe Berlinger fulfill a crucial role in today's society by providing independent information on pressing contemporary human rights and social issues. Their success as storytellers depends on access to those men and women willing to talk on camera. If the subjects of those documentaries are fearful of the ramifications of telling the truth then the filmmaker has no story.

Without a shield law, there is no recognized journalist/filmmaker/source protection, creating the very scenario we have now. The judges in this case must recognize this is first and foremost a first amendment issue. The higher courts need to overturn the decision and adhere to higher standards of journalistic privilege.

If we allow the voice of the independent artist to be stifled we should expect nothing less than extreme repercussions for freedom of information... and freedom in general.

Also last week, Floyd Abrams, perhaps the best-known First Amendment lawyer in the country, filed an Amicus Curiae (friend-of-the-court) brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The brief was joined by 13 (!) major media organizations– ABC, CBS, NBC, HBO, The Associated Press, Dow Jones, The Washington Post, The New York Times Company, Gannett Company, Hearst Corporation, the Daily News, the Directors Guild of America, and the International Documentary Association.

The New York Times' Dave Itzkoff, who has been following the case closely for the Arts Beat blog at NYTimes.com, wrote:

The brief says the district court's ruling "was fundamentally flawed" in its interpretation of the 1999 case Gonzales v. NBC, in which the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that even confidential materials can be released if they are likely to be relevant to a significant issue in the case and are not reasonably obtainable elsewhere.

Judge Kaplan's ruling, the brief said, "effectively shifted the burden of alleged unfairness onto the filmmakers, rendering this circuit's requirement of a relevance showing meaningless," and "made it far too easy for Chevron to obtain far too much, precisely what Gonzales forbids."

In the June 1, 2010 amicus brief, Abrams writes more on Judge Kaplan's misreading of the Gonzalez case and gets to the the real heart of the matter:

The vast distance between the District Court's reading of Gonzales and its text and spirit is illustrated by the Court's emphasis in both its May 10 and May 20 orders on the proposition that, because the individual subjects captured in the outtake footage voluntarily chose to expose themselves to public scrutiny through the inevitable screening of a completed film, it would "not credit any assertion that the discovery of the outtakes by Petitioners would compromise the ability of Berlinger or, for that matter, any other film maker, to obtain material from individuals interested in confidential treatment." This analysis completely ignores the relationship between a documentary filmmaker and the individuals that he or she interviews; it assumes, wrongly, that the participants in such a project would see no difference between the public circulation of a final film painstakingly prepared and edited by the filmmaker who solicited their contribution and whom they entrusted with telling their story and the potentially unlimited display of their every word in a widely-publicized multi-billion dollar international litigation.

And lastly, last week ahead of today's hearing, NPR's All Things Considered covered the legal battle in a story called 'A 'Crude' Awakening: Chevron Vs. The Documentarian'. The story predictably gives Chevron lawyer Randy Mastro of Gibson Dunn and company spokesman Kent Robertson each a chance to weigh in with their cynical spin. After today's loss in the courts over their attempts to get at Berlinger's CRUDE outtakes, I'm sure they're huddling up to devise their next tactic in Chevron's treacherous strategy to deceive, deny, and delay... until it all goes away.

But the communities in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest have other plans, and have vowed to struggle until they get the justice that has been denied them so long.

And of course, Berlinger's legal battle isn't over. While the Circuit Court stayed the lower court's order to turn over all his raw footage to Chevron, Berlinger still has to argue his case on appeal. Want to help with the costly legal battle? Any amount you can donate to the CRUDE First Amendment legal defense fund is deeply appreciated.

And if you still haven't seen the explosive, award-winning documentary CRUDE, see it, and judge for yourself.

– Han
Han Shan is Coordinator of Amazon Watch's Clean Up Ecuador Campaign

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Chevron Not Even Buying The Lies Chevron Is Selling.

(This was originally posted by Nick over at www.chevroninecuador.com – interesting, so cross-posted here.)

Chevron's Ecuador claims rejected by US courts for 5th time in two years.

Well is seems Chevron's brand new chief in-house Lawyer Hew Pate is really going to have his work cut out for him. Chevron must be telling him something like "hey buddy, we've got nowhere to go but up. Good luck".

Today, in yet another instance where Chevron has quietly tucked it’s tail between its legs and went h,ome the 5th lawsuit Chevron has brought to US federal court has been tossed out. Following last months swift rejection by the US Supreme Court, and with little fanfare, Chevron withdrew it’s claim that they had been released by the Ecuadorian government of any liability for the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste water and crude oil.

Chevron claims that they had remediated a small portion of the 916 waste pits it built in Ecuador. Yet, according to a Special Master report from the Ecuador trial the so-called remediated sites are extensively contaminated, containing cancer-causing toxins at levels hundreds of times higher than U.S. and Ecuadorian law allows.

Chevron has long claimed that their remediation process has released them of all remaining liabilities. Well, their own decision to withdraw this claim from federal court begs the question... Does Chevron even believe the lies coming from Chevron these days?

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Chevron Praised Ecuador’s Courts for years and years…

until the company stood to profit by trashing them.

It turns out that long before Chevron picked up their new theme that "Ecuador's courts are biased" (no doubt a message that was refined in countless focus groups before Chevron's P.R. firms started pushing it out to you, loyal reader) the company spent years praising the courts, in an attempt to get the case transferred down to Ecuador. Turns out that Chevron loved the Ecuadorian courts - loved them just until evidence started being filed that showed that Chevron was responsible for the environmental and humanitarian disaster in the region. As soon as that happened, Chevron started their current messaging that Ecuadorian courts are corrupt and biased. Hmm – seems convenient for Chevron that Ecuadorian courts turned biased just as the evidence started revealing the depths of the environmental and humanitarian crime committed in the region.

But read for yourself – we're posting here the 14 sworn affidavits that Texaco (which Chevron merged with in 2001) filed in U.S. Federal Court praising the Ecuadorian courts as fair and unbiased. You can see for yourself exactly what Texaco (and now Chevron) thought about the Ecuadorian judiciary - right up until the company had a $27 billion interest in trashing them.

This is Chevron's M.O. - do anything, and say anything, you have to in order to avoid having to take responsibility for your actions.

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