9 ms·

Chevron Is Refusing to Pay for the “Amazon Chernobyl”

155 points by ciconia 6y ago

thelock85 6y ago
This seems like a good for recent HN discussions around the interconnectedness, or lack thereof, of politics, corporations and (especially technical) employees. Does the Chevron engineer have no connection to Ecuador or its Amazonian residents, and wake up tomorrow to get the work done? Do they carry an entrenched perspective on environmental stewardship in the context of their work, and view this an insignificant blip? Do they have inside information that enables them to think otherwise or ignore such news? Regardless, it would seem like a hard task to remain neutral in one's stance, especially if the work feels like a right and not a privilege. How does a corporation navigate geo/socio/political crises in 2020 without batting down the hatches and maintaining a loyal monoculture?
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Almost all the humans you deal with are trying to be be morally acceptable in the tiny domain over which they have direct control while interacting with a variety of actors including corporations that the market selects for their willingness to screw the entire human race as hard as possible in pursuit of naked greed. When they don't directly do wrong they tell themselves they aren't culpable because they didn't do the harmful act. When they do they tell themselves someone else would have. People aren't liable to become more aware any time soon. We need to build better structures to demand better behavior and punish bad behavior. The behavior described doesn't merit a fine. They killed people it would more properly be punished by executions of those most directly responsible and prison for those complicit after the fact. This to be followed by the complete liquidation of the entire value of the company with zero dollars and the cancellation of all securities including employee pensions. This pain will prompt risk avoidance by those who don't want to lose their investment, their pensions, or their heads.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > How does a corporation navigate geo/socio/political crises in 2020 without batting down the hatches and maintaining a loyal monoculture? In the long term, a lot of events and social movements are not really that impactful. #Metoo was supposed to reshape everything a few years ago. It is off the radar now. Numerous events were supposed to have reshaped the culture on climate change. I remember that discussion happening with Hurricane Katrina. The "racial reckoning" that the USA would supposedly go through this year has mostly disappeared. Same with the last time it happened 2014 (other police misconduct) and in 2005 (Katrina). Currently the thinking is that this pandemic will fundamentally reshape how we work and where. You will notice that companies aren't yet giving up their office space and Facebook just bought a new building. We attach way too much significance to the current moment and companies probably have risk departments that realize that.
thrworer224234 6y ago
This is hardly new. For all it self-righteous pomposity, US corporations and Govt. have a history of this sort of thing - from UFC, and now the oil cos. in the Americas, to Union Carbide in India [Bhopal].
- gear54rus 6y ago
  Any links to that UFC occasion you refer to?
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    Read up on banana republics.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    United Fruit Company.
  - latch 6y ago
    UFC - United Fruit Company. It's hard to pick out 1 specific example. Their wiki page (1) reads like a plot where the villain is a caricature of capitalism. (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
  - jraby3 6y ago
    Also worth reading the Fish that Ate the Whale. Great book about the topic.
  - throw2010060733 6y ago
    Here is one I saved for myself https://narratively.com/the-literally-unbelievable-story-of-the-original-fake-news-network/ https://narratively.com/the-literally-unbelievable-story-of-...
- throw2010060733 6y ago
  Yeah, I definitely think that people in the US needs to learn that the US has been involved in pretty much all brutal regime changes throughout Latin America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... and reading the grayzone https://thegrayzone.com/ https://thegrayzone.com/ this is definitely still going on today.
Lammy 6y ago
Sounds more like an "Amazon Bhopal"
jimbob45 6y ago
“ In 2001, Chevron acquired Texaco, including all of its assets and civil liabilities. One of those liabilities was the "Amazon Chernobyl," a 1,700-square-mile environmental disaster in Ecuador...” My opinion is changed after reading this. It would be tough for me to care about fixing an acquired company’s past deeds. I would simply put in in the queue of places I could fix the environment with the highest impact rather than the queue of places I am personally indebted to solve myself.
- hobs 6y ago
  Would it be difficult to realize their profits? Why do their misdeeds get a different view?
- mulmen 6y ago
  Ok so who is going to fix this spot then?
- nextaccountic 6y ago
  > Chevron insists that Texaco is only responsible for a portion of the damage, has "already cleaned up its share" and attributes any remaining pollution to Ecuador's state-owned national oil company. The government of Ecuador has been clear, in turn, that Chevron is liable for all of the damage. It's not up to Chevron to decide whether they are liable to clean this pollution.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    It is up to a court in a country where they have assets and all those courts have ruled in favour of Chevron.
    - seg_lol 6y ago
      You are quite active in this thread, so it would make sense you read in the article the same thing I did. > Somehow, David beat Goliath. After 18 years of court battles, the coalition won $9.5 billion in damages, based largely on the results of 54 independent judicial site inspections. In all, more than a dozen judges in Ecuador (where Chevron insisted the trial be held) have validated the judgment. In addition, three appellate courts in Canada (where Ecuadorians launched a collective action), including the country's supreme court, have ruled the Ecuadorians have a right to try to enforce their judgment.
philtar 6y ago
If you were one of the people who thought this was talking about Amazon the eCommerce site as opposed to the actual Amazon, welcome to the new world order. Edit: I mean just from reading the title but I guess this post didn't land well. Oh well.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  You would not get that impression even reading the first two paragraphs of the article.
- d0ugal 6y ago
  I 100% thought this was about Amazon the company as I clicked the link. Sad really.
MattGaiser 6y ago
I have never been able to get a firm grasp of what is going on here, but my understanding is that Ecuador nationalized the oilfields. Why would they not get the liabilities that went with it according to however that nationalization arrangement was generated? That is what Chevron claims.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  When you buy out foo the government insists that you get foos assets and liabilities to avoid an obvious exploit. This is presumably country by country enshrined in law made above the head of the companies by the government. When the government takes back foo by an act of government they aren't obliged to arrange the transaction in that way indeed they can define what the law is. Morally speaking I don't see the problem. They kicked out Texaco whose behavior was harming their nation and their people. Nationalizing their assets is morally valid remedy but it need not be entirely a cure for their wrongdoing.
ncmncm 6y ago
Chevron's recent conduct has been and continues to be as thoroughly reprehensible as any I have heard of by any corporation. Hounding the plaintiffs' lawyer into prison is dirty, dirty, dirty. Judges cooperating in Chevron's activities are even worse.
stickfigure 6y ago
I'm trying to find out what the "other side" perspective could be here, since this piece is clearly written with an agenda (possibly a just one!). There's some hint to it in this paragraph: Chevron insists that Texaco is only responsible for a portion of the damage, has "already cleaned up its share" and attributes any remaining pollution to Ecuador's state-owned national oil company. The government of Ecuador has been clear, in turn, that Chevron is liable for all of the damage. Anyone know more detail?
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Chevron's argument as far as I can tell is that the Government of Ecuador already settled with Texaco on this. The most neutral article I found on it. http://www.iberianlawyer.com/latin-america/news-latin-america/8009-the-hague-rules-in-favour-of-chevron-in-lago-agrio-spat http://www.iberianlawyer.com/latin-america/news-latin-americ...
  - haneefmubarak 6y ago
    @dang this seems substantially more balanced and big picture - could we replace the link with this?
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    > However, Petroecuador failed to conduct the clean-up it had pledged to undertake and has continued to operate and expand its oil operations in the area for more than 25 years, the US oil company said. Absolutely unthinkable that a state-owned oil company would use political connections to try to offload liabilities onto wealthy foreign conglomerates. Just ridiculous.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      State owned oil companies come in all shapes and sizes, the formerly Canadian state-owned Petro-Canada (now part of Suncor Energy), for instance, wouldn't get away with these shenanigans.
coliveira 6y ago
So lets be clear, Chevron is paying dozens of millions of dollars a year to a guy acting as CEO. Is this really a salary or is it effectively a bribe to have someone ambitious doing anything, clean or dirty, to advance the interests of the company? I wonder if an experienced professional, receiving a decent but normal salary would do the kind of absurd things that these companies are doing. To me it seems that CEOs and high executives in these companies are more partners in crime than just business managers.
JamesBarney 6y ago
Here is the wikipedia that goes into depth about this. Chevron doesn't look great, but Ecuador looks awful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lago_Agrio_oil_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lago_Agrio_oil_field
- strogonoff 6y ago
  It’s so hard to empathize with either side when you know that both are merely trying to enrich themselves and neither is really concerned about the damage done, even the side that’s trying to get positive publicity from it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
divbzero 6y ago
Patrick Radden Keefe published a good review of this legal battle in the New Yorker in 2012 [1]. The decades-long litigation felt long-in-the-tooth when that article came out and the fight continues still… [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fortune-patrick-radden-keefe https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fo... “Reversal of Fortune”, New Yorker 9 Jan 2012

155 points by ciconia 6y ago

This seems like a good for recent HN discussions around the interconnectedness, or lack thereof, of politics, corporations and (especially technical) employees. Does the Chevron engineer have no connection to Ecuador or its Amazonian residents, and wake up tomorrow to get the work done? Do they carry an entrenched perspective on environmental stewardship in the context of their work, and view this an insignificant blip? Do they have inside information that enables them to think otherwise or ignore such news? Regardless, it would seem like a hard task to remain neutral in one's stance, especially if the work feels like a right and not a privilege. How does a corporation navigate geo/socio/political crises in 2020 without batting down the hatches and maintaining a loyal monoculture?

michaelmrose 6y ago
Almost all the humans you deal with are trying to be be morally acceptable in the tiny domain over which they have direct control while interacting with a variety of actors including corporations that the market selects for their willingness to screw the entire human race as hard as possible in pursuit of naked greed. When they don't directly do wrong they tell themselves they aren't culpable because they didn't do the harmful act. When they do they tell themselves someone else would have. People aren't liable to become more aware any time soon. We need to build better structures to demand better behavior and punish bad behavior. The behavior described doesn't merit a fine. They killed people it would more properly be punished by executions of those most directly responsible and prison for those complicit after the fact. This to be followed by the complete liquidation of the entire value of the company with zero dollars and the cancellation of all securities including employee pensions. This pain will prompt risk avoidance by those who don't want to lose their investment, their pensions, or their heads.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> How does a corporation navigate geo/socio/political crises in 2020 without batting down the hatches and maintaining a loyal monoculture? In the long term, a lot of events and social movements are not really that impactful. #Metoo was supposed to reshape everything a few years ago. It is off the radar now. Numerous events were supposed to have reshaped the culture on climate change. I remember that discussion happening with Hurricane Katrina. The "racial reckoning" that the USA would supposedly go through this year has mostly disappeared. Same with the last time it happened 2014 (other police misconduct) and in 2005 (Katrina). Currently the thinking is that this pandemic will fundamentally reshape how we work and where. You will notice that companies aren't yet giving up their office space and Facebook just bought a new building. We attach way too much significance to the current moment and companies probably have risk departments that realize that.

thrworer224234 6y ago

This is hardly new. For all it self-righteous pomposity, US corporations and Govt. have a history of this sort of thing - from UFC, and now the oil cos. in the Americas, to Union Carbide in India [Bhopal].

gear54rus 6y ago
Any links to that UFC occasion you refer to?
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Read up on banana republics.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  United Fruit Company.
- latch 6y ago
  UFC - United Fruit Company. It's hard to pick out 1 specific example. Their wiki page (1) reads like a plot where the villain is a caricature of capitalism. (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
- jraby3 6y ago
  Also worth reading the Fish that Ate the Whale. Great book about the topic.
- throw2010060733 6y ago
  Here is one I saved for myself https://narratively.com/the-literally-unbelievable-story-of-the-original-fake-news-network/ https://narratively.com/the-literally-unbelievable-story-of-...
throw2010060733 6y ago
Yeah, I definitely think that people in the US needs to learn that the US has been involved in pretty much all brutal regime changes throughout Latin America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... and reading the grayzone https://thegrayzone.com/ https://thegrayzone.com/ this is definitely still going on today.

Lammy 6y ago

Sounds more like an "Amazon Bhopal"

jimbob45 6y ago

“ In 2001, Chevron acquired Texaco, including all of its assets and civil liabilities. One of those liabilities was the "Amazon Chernobyl," a 1,700-square-mile environmental disaster in Ecuador...” My opinion is changed after reading this. It would be tough for me to care about fixing an acquired company’s past deeds. I would simply put in in the queue of places I could fix the environment with the highest impact rather than the queue of places I am personally indebted to solve myself.

hobs 6y ago
Would it be difficult to realize their profits? Why do their misdeeds get a different view?
mulmen 6y ago
Ok so who is going to fix this spot then?
nextaccountic 6y ago
> Chevron insists that Texaco is only responsible for a portion of the damage, has "already cleaned up its share" and attributes any remaining pollution to Ecuador's state-owned national oil company. The government of Ecuador has been clear, in turn, that Chevron is liable for all of the damage. It's not up to Chevron to decide whether they are liable to clean this pollution.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  It is up to a court in a country where they have assets and all those courts have ruled in favour of Chevron.
  - seg_lol 6y ago
    You are quite active in this thread, so it would make sense you read in the article the same thing I did. > Somehow, David beat Goliath. After 18 years of court battles, the coalition won $9.5 billion in damages, based largely on the results of 54 independent judicial site inspections. In all, more than a dozen judges in Ecuador (where Chevron insisted the trial be held) have validated the judgment. In addition, three appellate courts in Canada (where Ecuadorians launched a collective action), including the country's supreme court, have ruled the Ecuadorians have a right to try to enforce their judgment.

philtar 6y ago

If you were one of the people who thought this was talking about Amazon the eCommerce site as opposed to the actual Amazon, welcome to the new world order. Edit: I mean just from reading the title but I guess this post didn't land well. Oh well.

MattGaiser 6y ago
You would not get that impression even reading the first two paragraphs of the article.
d0ugal 6y ago
I 100% thought this was about Amazon the company as I clicked the link. Sad really.

MattGaiser 6y ago

I have never been able to get a firm grasp of what is going on here, but my understanding is that Ecuador nationalized the oilfields. Why would they not get the liabilities that went with it according to however that nationalization arrangement was generated? That is what Chevron claims.

michaelmrose 6y ago
When you buy out foo the government insists that you get foos assets and liabilities to avoid an obvious exploit. This is presumably country by country enshrined in law made above the head of the companies by the government. When the government takes back foo by an act of government they aren't obliged to arrange the transaction in that way indeed they can define what the law is. Morally speaking I don't see the problem. They kicked out Texaco whose behavior was harming their nation and their people. Nationalizing their assets is morally valid remedy but it need not be entirely a cure for their wrongdoing.

ncmncm 6y ago

Chevron's recent conduct has been and continues to be as thoroughly reprehensible as any I have heard of by any corporation. Hounding the plaintiffs' lawyer into prison is dirty, dirty, dirty. Judges cooperating in Chevron's activities are even worse.

stickfigure 6y ago

I'm trying to find out what the "other side" perspective could be here, since this piece is clearly written with an agenda (possibly a just one!). There's some hint to it in this paragraph: Chevron insists that Texaco is only responsible for a portion of the damage, has "already cleaned up its share" and attributes any remaining pollution to Ecuador's state-owned national oil company. The government of Ecuador has been clear, in turn, that Chevron is liable for all of the damage. Anyone know more detail?

MattGaiser 6y ago
Chevron's argument as far as I can tell is that the Government of Ecuador already settled with Texaco on this. The most neutral article I found on it. http://www.iberianlawyer.com/latin-america/news-latin-america/8009-the-hague-rules-in-favour-of-chevron-in-lago-agrio-spat http://www.iberianlawyer.com/latin-america/news-latin-americ...
- haneefmubarak 6y ago
  @dang this seems substantially more balanced and big picture - could we replace the link with this?
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  > However, Petroecuador failed to conduct the clean-up it had pledged to undertake and has continued to operate and expand its oil operations in the area for more than 25 years, the US oil company said. Absolutely unthinkable that a state-owned oil company would use political connections to try to offload liabilities onto wealthy foreign conglomerates. Just ridiculous.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    State owned oil companies come in all shapes and sizes, the formerly Canadian state-owned Petro-Canada (now part of Suncor Energy), for instance, wouldn't get away with these shenanigans.

coliveira 6y ago

So lets be clear, Chevron is paying dozens of millions of dollars a year to a guy acting as CEO. Is this really a salary or is it effectively a bribe to have someone ambitious doing anything, clean or dirty, to advance the interests of the company? I wonder if an experienced professional, receiving a decent but normal salary would do the kind of absurd things that these companies are doing. To me it seems that CEOs and high executives in these companies are more partners in crime than just business managers.

JamesBarney 6y ago

Here is the wikipedia that goes into depth about this. Chevron doesn't look great, but Ecuador looks awful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lago_Agrio_oil_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lago_Agrio_oil_field

strogonoff 6y ago
It’s so hard to empathize with either side when you know that both are merely trying to enrich themselves and neither is really concerned about the damage done, even the side that’s trying to get positive publicity from it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

divbzero 6y ago

Patrick Radden Keefe published a good review of this legal battle in the New Yorker in 2012 [1]. The decades-long litigation felt long-in-the-tooth when that article came out and the fight continues still… [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fortune-patrick-radden-keefe https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fo... “Reversal of Fortune”, New Yorker 9 Jan 2012