This is an excellent article telling the story of Pablo Facardo, the Ecuadorean lawyer who is bringing Chevron to task over this atrocity.
surely not, your information must be wrong. that’s a nice AMERICAN company. they’d never do anything like that…
Basing a company’s business ethics on by which country their headquarters is located in is pretty retarded. Publicly traded companies answer to their international stockholders before anybody else.
Onthebrink, if you were responding to the last post, please read it again. Obviously it was tongue in cheek.
Everyone knows that major multinational corporations, especially oil companies, routinely disregard major environmental disasters they leave behind, as well as child labor, safety and human rights violations they rely on, in their insatiable quest for profits, and they only take action to remedy such problems when public awareness and outrage are sufficient to have a negative impact on those profits or legal sanctions outweigh the remedial costs. For such companies, profits are all that matters – those other issues are incidental.
freeport goldmine anybody?
or strip mining for tin and nickel, by hand, in the congo and gabon, and the upper reaches of the amazon…etc?
mines big and small tend to be at the cost of the environment. only strong local govt regulation, oversight and enforcement, not the govt of the HQ of the company, can prevent significant pollution, and even then it is not always successful. see depleted montana mines for chrome and copper, and gold-zinc-silver mines in tasmania’s mid-west for some poor outcomes in suposeedly ‘civilised’ countries.
Especially in underdeveloped or developing nations where corruption is rampant and government employees are paid fortunes, or steal fortunes, to permit the foreigners to continue stealing all of their country’s resources and leaving a foul mess behind.
This is not fair. Overall, foreign companies operate at much higher standards than local ones across the board; they have been absolutely instrumental in promoting women, raising the bar on labor rights, increasing needed investment to provide much need jobs and even transfering important technology. There may be examples of egregious actions by some foreign companies but given that the local environmental laws are often lax to non-existent, I would ask whether these companies were operating within the legal framework of those nations and how their record would compare with any local entities. I am sure that there simply is no comparison. Much of this heated hype about multinationals stealing resources and exploiting locals is such nonsense that it is not worth responding to. Mother Theresa: I for one know that you know better than this so please do not encourage this kind of fallacious and discredited thinking.
So your position is that if the local laws were weak, then it’s fair game and international companies can just come in and rape the countryside. It’s their fault their laws are lax, and contain loopholes? Alternatively, if bad little locals do it, then that justifies large international companies from raping the countryside?
Wow, you become more senile everyday. the Neocon virus is way more powerful than I thought. Then again, to expose your flawed and terrible logic like this, maybe the virus is eating your brain.
That is NEVER or extremely rarely happening today anywhere in the world. It is not in these companies’ interests to do so. Most companies are very socially responsible. I do not know the full facts here but more often than not, if there is a problem with pollution, it is because someone local who was supposed to handle it paid off government officials or something of that nature.
I dispute that Western companies are raping the world anywhere today. Think about it. It just does not make sense.
Well, I have an idea then, a novel one to someone like you who ironically should know better (what did you get your diploma over the Internet?), let’s have the full facts on this case so we can examine them. Would you also like to hold the organizations who are responsible for bringing this case to the attention of all concerned? Shall we also look into any hidden motives that they might have as well as the political postures of their leaders? Just a thought… I wonder what we would find…
That is NEVER or extremely rarely happening today anywhere in the world. It is not in these companies’ interests to do so. Most companies are very socially responsible. I do not know the full facts here but more often than not, if there is a problem with pollution, it is because someone local who was supposed to handle it paid off government officials or something of that nature.
I dispute that Western companies are raping the world anywhere today. Think about it. It just does not make sense.
Well, I have an idea then, a novel one to someone like you who ironically should know better (what did you get your diploma over the Internet?), let’s have the full facts on this case so we can examine them. Would you also like to hold the organizations who are responsible for bringing this case to the attention of all concerned? Shall we also look into any hidden motives that they might have as well as the political postures of their leaders? Just a thought… I wonder what we would find…[/quote]
I’m not saying whether a given international company is indeed raping the countryside. I am merely attacking your lack of reason, logic, and mental faculty. Your only response is that the companies are not doing bad things so it’s all justified and, impliedly, your premise still holds. That is the whimper of a desperate man.
[quote]The results of this Judicial Inspection show that Texpet completed the pit closures at the
Sacha 6 well site in 1996 in full compliance with the procedures and criteria specified in
the Remedial Action Plan and in a manner consistent with the applicable technical
criteria and technologies in use internationally at that time and, in many cases, even
today. During the recent Judicial Inspection, subsurface soils beneath the pits
remediated by Texpet in 1996 and at other locations near the Sacha 6 well site were
found to contain moderate concentrations of highly weathered petroleum, which
laboratory tests show to be non-soluble, non-volatile, and essentially immobile within the
soil matrix. These subsurface soils pose no risk to human health or the environment
because: i) a clean soil cover overlies all such subsurface soil areas, preventing direct
exposure of humans or animals to the weathered petroleum, and ii) the composition and
concentration of the weathered petroleum measured in these subsurface soils is such
that, even if exposure were to occur, no harmful effects would be anticipated for
humans, animals, or plants.
Sampling and testing of 11 local water wells also confirmed that there are no
concentrations of petroleum constituents present in these water supply wells in excess
of drinking water standards issued by the USEPA or World Health Organization (WHO).
However, elevated levels of coliform bacteria, which are indicative of poor sanitation
practices and are in no way associated with petroleum operations, were found in several
household water wells at concentrations likely to cause symptoms such as diarrhea,
vomiting, fever, and headache, as well as more serious illnesses.
The following paragraphs provide further discussion of each of the principal findings of
this Judicial Inspection. Detailed responses to each of the technical questions posed by
the Court with regard to the Sacha 6 well site are provided in Section 4.0 of this report.[/quote]
citing from Texaco, are we? Well, let me cite from Kingpin then, just as a good authority as any…
[quote]
Neighbor: Hey Roy, can you get sick from drinking piss?
Roy: I think you can.
Neighbor: Even if its your own?
Roy: Just because you’re familiar with the missionary position doesn’t make you a missionary.
Claudia: Look, Mr. Munster, you’re not exactly the smartest guy I ever ran across.
Roy: Oh yeah? And who are you, Alfred Einstein? [/quote]
[quote]Ishmael: You should try to quit. They say its bad for your heart, your lungs. It quickens the aging process.
Roy: Who’s done more research than the good people at the American Tobacco Industry? They say its harmless. Why would they lie? If you’re dead, you can’t smoke. [/quote]
Fred, I know a guy who used to do litigation against tobacco, energy, software companies. The lawsuit against PG&E (dumping Benzene/Cadmium compounds in our fuckin water supply)(Erin Brockavich for your reference) is some real shit. There are kids IN AMERICA who will never be able to do the things you and I take for granted. Instead, they must spend THEIR LIFE in hospitals. This is in America where the law is about as good as it gets. What the hell do you think happens outside when these “international” goodwill, You’re family companies do when those laws don’t even stop them?
Reading off the other guy’s websites (unless it’s an admission of guilt) and taking such statements at face value is a STUPID as it gets. You’ve lost your touch. Not even trying, are you.
This was done deliberately as I knew that you would be too lazy and too kneejerk to actually read it. These were the findings of the research expert hired BY THE COURT. hahaha Jumped a bit too fast to respond did we? What is that egg foo yung on your face? haha Go to the site. READ ALL the reports and then respond. This is just yet another example of something that Vay found on some crackpot Web site and that Eureka! Another stick with which to beat Corporate America.
This was done deliberately as I knew that you would be too lazy and too kneejerk to actually read it. These were the findings of the research expert hired BY THE COURT. hahaha Jumped a bit too fast to respond did we? What is that egg foo yung on your face? haha Go to the site. READ ALL the reports and then respond. This is just yet another example of something that Vay found on some crackpot Web site and that Eureka! Another stick with which to beat Corporate America.[/quote]
Uhh… the last sentence with Judicial Inspection and Court findings gave it away. I wouldn’t celebrate too quickly. I’m talking about your methodology.
[quote]Roy: I know what you’re thinking, but let me explain…
[Claudia kicks Roy in the crotch]
Roy: [very softly] Mommy. You must have a really wide foot because you got both of them [/quote]
[quote]Erin Brockovich, which was No. 1 at the box office for a second week in a row, is a slick and enjoyable movie. The film tells the true story of Erin Brockovich, a legal assistant, who in 1993 lined up some 650 prospective plaintiffs from the tiny desert town of Hinkley, Calif., to sue Pacific Gas & Electric. PG&E’s nearby plant was leaching chromium 6, a rust inhibitor, into Hinkley’s water supply, and the suit blamed the chemical for dozens of symptoms, ranging from nosebleeds to breast cancer, Hodgkin’s disease, miscarriages and spinal deterioration. In 1996 PG&E settled the case for $333 million. The problem is that no one agent could possibly have caused more than a handful of the symptoms described. Chromium 6 in the water almost certainly didn’t cause any of them.
The Enviromental Protection Agency does consider chromium 6 a human carcinogen. But it’s linked only to cancer of the lung and of the septum. Further, as one might guess from these two cancers, it’s a carcinogen only when inhaled. Even then, research indicates it takes massive exposure over many years. What’s more, “it appears the problem has been associated with production of the compounds, not the actual use,” says William Blot, who heads the International Epidemiology Institute.
Here’s what the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System, updated in 1998, says about chromium 6: “No data were located in the available literature that suggested that it is carcinogenic by the oral route of exposure.” Exhaustive, repeated studies of communities adjacent to landfills packed with chromium 6, including that detectable in residents’ urine, have found no ill health effects, cancer or otherwise. A January report from Glasgow, Scotland, found “no increased risk of congenital abnormalities, lung cancer, or a range of other diseases.” Earlier, a panel evaluating exposed residents near a New Jersey landfill estimated that “the plausible incremental cancer risk to individuals at residential sites would be substantially less than 1 in 1,000,000.”
Julia Roberts
A study by Mr. Blot and others, just published in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, evaluated almost 52,000 workers who worked at three PG&E plants over a quarter of a century. One was the Hinkley plant, and another is near Kettleman, Calif., where Ms. Brockovich’s firm is rounding up plaintiffs today. The researchers found cancer rates were no higher than in the general California population and death rates significantly lower than expected.
Other studies have shown that rodents dosed at 25 parts per million and dogs dosed at 11.2 parts per million displayed no ill effects. The amount of chromium 6 in Hinkley’s water never got higher than 0.58 parts per million. As for miscarriages, the EPA reports that in studies of mice and rats, “the reproductive assessment indicated that administered at 15-400 ppm in the diet [it] is not a reproductive toxicant in either sex.”
Given all this, why did PG&E cough up $333 million? For one thing, much of this medical evidence came in after the settlement. Further, Ms. Brockovich’s small firm enlisted high-powered trial lawyer Thomas Girardi, a specialist in toxic pollution suits. Slick lawyers and sympathetic witnesses could have cost the company much more at trial or arbitration.
Now Ms. Brockovich’s firm is representing some 1,500 other clients planning to sue PG&E. It’s profitable work for the lawyers, who collected $133.6 million in fees from the 1996 settlement, while Ms. Brockovich herself collected a $2 million bonus. Unfortunately, to do so she had to convince thousands of people that they’ve been poisoned for decades and will continue to suffer for the rest of their lives. We now know the scientific evidence doesn’t back her up.
Read a longer version of this article, “The Dark Side of Erin Brockovich” (The National Post, March 29, 2000) as well as “Errin’ Brockovich” (American Outlook, Summer 2000).[/quote]
Back to you regarding those horrible things that PG&E did to the innocent “victims” of this small town who were “victimized” even further by the massive pay check to these trial lawyers. Got to pay off that law school loan somehow eh? Jackie boy?
Excellent! Nice!
Great! What’s wrong with it?!
Know better than what? I know multinational profit-driven corporations are concerned primarily, overwhelmingly with making profits and they only care about the people and countries from which they extract resources if they believe those issues may affect their profits. One would be naive to believe otherwise.
[quote]KNOWN TO HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS as “Asia’s new killing fields,” Burma is a country violently divided. The military regime which controls the country of 42 million is currently waging battles against more than a dozen ethnic insurgent groups and a student-led democracy movement. The regime, considered illegitimate by most countries in the world, faces international condemnation and pressure from the democratically elected government-in-exile to relinquish power.
The military regime, which calls itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), is relying on the exploitation of Burma’s natural resources to finance the military battles it is waging against its own people. In 1988, the regime “began to sell Burma’s natural resources like fast food,” according to the Burma Action Group, a British human rights organization. A main item on this menu is the sale of Burma’s oil reserves.
With the critical assistance of multinational oil corporations, the SLORC plans to significantly expand oil production in Burma over the next several years to generate foreign currency to purchase weapons. Between 70 and 90 percent of the profits from oil and gas development will go directly to the military regime. The Burma Rights Movement for Action, an opposition group based in Bangkok, Thailand, estimates oil exploration contracts have accounted for 65 percent of the foreign investment in Burma since 1988. . .[/quote]
multinationalmonitor.org/hyp … 92_06.html
[quote]There is a long and terrible record of environmental destruction and human rights violations in the oil-producing regions of Nigeria. The gross level of environmental degradation caused by oil exploration and extraction in the Niger Delta has gone unchecked for the past 30 years. Evidence shows that the oil companies operating in Nigeria have not only disregarded their responsibility towards the environment but have acted in complicity with the military’s repression of Nigerian citizens. The profit-driven collusion between multinational oil companies and the past and present Nigerian governments has cost many lives and continues to threaten the stability of the region.
The authors of this report spent ten days in the Niger Delta (Sept. 8-18, 1999) visiting communities that have been affected by the operations of the following multinational corporations: Shell, Mobil, Agip and Elf. Plans to visit areas in Delta State near Chevron Corporation facilities were canceled due to the instability in those areas. However, while in Nigeria, we interviewed individuals who gave personal accounts alleging Chevron’s involvement in recent killings in the Delta. We also met with a group of U.S. lawyers who were in Nigeria at the time gathering information to substantiate lawsuits against Chevron in U.S. courts. . .[/quote]
essentialaction.org/shell/report/intro.html
[quote] the environment in Ogoni and other Niger delta area has been completely devastated by decades of reckless oil exploration or ecological warfare by SHELL and other multinationals. . .
Shell has engaged in the use of paramilitary to attack the oil producing communities just to subdue them, and continue their environmental damages for their economic interest. Chevron Nigeria gave out its helicopters and boats to Nigeria military to crack down civil populace of the oil.
Peaceful demonstration against oil exploration in Nigeria, hundreds of people are being killed by soldiers. . . [/quote]
humanrights.de/doc_en/countr … onals.html
[quote]Huge soya farms financed by Cargill, the largest privately owned company in the world, are the rainforest’s new worst enemy . . .
On the ground, what was once a thriving ecosystem supporting at least 300 tree species for every hectare, is now a wasteland. Dead roots and dry grass crunch underfoot and the breeze throws up dust from eroded soil. . .
Brazil has overtaken the United States as the world’s leading exporter of soya. . . . Brazilian soya beans are feeding Europe’s growing hunger for cheap meat substitutes, and have overtaken logging and cattle ranching as the main engine of deforestation. . .
In the past three years, nearly 70,000 square kilometres of the Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. The smoke from burning trees pushed Brazil into the top four of global greenhouse gas producers in 2004. Despite commitments from the government of President Lula da Silva, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest continues. . . there was a 32 per cent decrease in the rate of deforestation last year. . . [/quote]
news.independent.co.uk/environme … 181617.ece
[quote]. . . Ecuadoran oil operations discharged 4.3 million gallons of toxic wastes into the Oriente’s environment every day. Until 1990, Texaco controlled 90 percent of these oil operations. A later CESR report confirmed that these wastes created a potential health catastrophe. The report documented toxic contaminants in drinking water at levels reaching 1,000 times the safety standards recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. . .
This assault on the environment is intertwined with a parallel social and cultural assault on indigenous groups. . . . A 1987 study by the Ecuadoran government warned that oil development led by Texaco had placed the local indigenous groups “at the edge of extinction as a distinct people.” . . . [/quote]
multinationalmonitor.org/hyp … 95_07.html
[quote=“fred smith”][quote]Erin Brockovich, which was No. 1 at the box office for a second week in a row, is a slick and enjoyable movie. The film tells the true story of Erin Brockovich, a legal assistant, who in 1993 lined up some 650 prospective plaintiffs from the tiny desert town of Hinkley, Calif., to sue Pacific Gas & Electric. PG&E’s nearby plant was leaching chromium 6, a rust inhibitor, into Hinkley’s water supply, and the suit blamed the chemical for dozens of symptoms, ranging from nosebleeds to breast cancer, Hodgkin’s disease, miscarriages and spinal deterioration. In 1996 PG&E settled the case for $333 million. The problem is that no one agent could possibly have caused more than a handful of the symptoms described. Chromium 6 in the water almost certainly didn’t cause any of them.
The Enviromental Protection Agency does consider chromium 6 a human carcinogen. But it’s linked only to cancer of the lung and of the septum. Further, as one might guess from these two cancers, it’s a carcinogen only when inhaled. Even then, research indicates it takes massive exposure over many years. What’s more, “it appears the problem has been associated with production of the compounds, not the actual use,” says William Blot, who heads the International Epidemiology Institute.
Here’s what the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System, updated in 1998, says about chromium 6: “No data were located in the available literature that suggested that it is carcinogenic by the oral route of exposure.” Exhaustive, repeated studies of communities adjacent to landfills packed with chromium 6, including that detectable in residents’ urine, have found no ill health effects, cancer or otherwise. A January report from Glasgow, Scotland, found “no increased risk of congenital abnormalities, lung cancer, or a range of other diseases.” Earlier, a panel evaluating exposed residents near a New Jersey landfill estimated that “the plausible incremental cancer risk to individuals at residential sites would be substantially less than 1 in 1,000,000.”
Julia Roberts
A study by Mr. Blot and others, just published in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, evaluated almost 52,000 workers who worked at three PG&E plants over a quarter of a century. One was the Hinkley plant, and another is near Kettleman, Calif., where Ms. Brockovich’s firm is rounding up plaintiffs today. The researchers found cancer rates were no higher than in the general California population and death rates significantly lower than expected.
Other studies have shown that rodents dosed at 25 parts per million and dogs dosed at 11.2 parts per million displayed no ill effects. The amount of chromium 6 in Hinkley’s water never got higher than 0.58 parts per million. As for miscarriages, the EPA reports that in studies of mice and rats, “the reproductive assessment indicated that administered at 15-400 ppm in the diet [it] is not a reproductive toxicant in either sex.”
Given all this, why did PG&E cough up $333 million? For one thing, much of this medical evidence came in after the settlement. Further, Ms. Brockovich’s small firm enlisted high-powered trial lawyer Thomas Girardi, a specialist in toxic pollution suits. Slick lawyers and sympathetic witnesses could have cost the company much more at trial or arbitration.
Now Ms. Brockovich’s firm is representing some 1,500 other clients planning to sue PG&E. It’s profitable work for the lawyers, who collected $133.6 million in fees from the 1996 settlement, while Ms. Brockovich herself collected a $2 million bonus. Unfortunately, to do so she had to convince thousands of people that they’ve been poisoned for decades and will continue to suffer for the rest of their lives. We now know the scientific evidence doesn’t back her up.
Read a longer version of this article, “The Dark Side of Erin Brockovich” (The National Post, March 29, 2000) as well as “Errin’ Brockovich” (American Outlook, Summer 2000).[/quote]
Back to you regarding those horrible things that PG&E did to the innocent “victims” of this small town who were “victimized” even further by the massive pay check to these trial lawyers. Got to pay off that law school loan somehow eh? Jackie boy?[/quote]
That’s great, quoting from another website when you know jack-all about this subject. That’s exactly the methodology I’m talking about. Parroting someone’s talk, aping someone’s ways. I happen to have talked to one of these kids, read court filings. etc. There were also fundamental problems with the PG&E 's expert report. as in can you say Korean doctor and cloning scenario.
So quit while you’re ahead. What happened to you, so sloppy now.
and often times, the international company partners with the local company (albeit required by law in certain cases).