Amazon pollution case could cost Chevron billions

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Saturday, 12.20.08
Amazon pollution case could cost Chevron billions

By FRANK BAJAK
Associated Press Writer

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador -- When the sun beats particularly hot on this land in the middle of the jungle, the roads sweat petroleum.
A Rhode Island-sized expanse of what was once pristine Amazon rainforest is crisscrossed with oil wells and pipeline grids built by Texaco Inc. a generation ago. And for the past 15 years, a class-action lawsuit has been winding its way through the courts on behalf of the more than 125,000 people who drink, bathe, fish and wash their clothes in tainted headwaters of the Amazon River.

Now a single judge is expected to rule in the case in 2009 from a ramshackle courtroom in this northern frontier town. Statements from a court-appointed expert suggest Chevron Corp. - which bought Texaco in 2001 - will be held responsible for the many oil spills and dumping of wastewater. If Chevron loses, it could be ordered to pay up to $27.3 billion in damages, though an appeal would be likely.

The expert, geological engineer Richard Cabrera, largely accepts plaintiffs' claims that Texaco left a mess when it left in the early 1990s. He is recommending damages based partly on his calculation of 1,401 pollution-caused cancer deaths.

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One of the first stops is a fresh spill. It's little more than 50 gallons, dark and gooey. Bigger spills have smothered crops, choked birds, killed cattle.

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The plaintiffs say Texaco saved $8-$10 a barrel by dumping some 18 billion gallons of the wastewater from drilling and extraction into waste pits instead of re-injecting it back deep into the ground. The more than 1,000 waste pits were not lined, so the toxins seeped into the groundwater, they say.

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The plaintiffs also allege the company poisoned the air by burning off natural gas and set fire to solid wastes during the 1990s remediation. They say they found a July 1972 Texaco memo that orders the company's acting manager in Ecuador to report only major spills and destroy "all previous reports" on spills.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/915/story/820871.html