Thread regarding Chevron Corp. layoffs

"Ecuador’s leadership ... took 90% plus of the oil profits". This fact are not in dispute!

Interesting fantasy story you make up about the Ecuadorian government, but there is not evidence to back up your claim. You would make a good Chevron lawyer, spouting nonsense.

4rrb+1gKZgv7R: Hate to be the one to pop your bubble, but the true villains here are Ecuador’s leadership. They took 90% plus of the oil profits and once Texaco was forced out doubled down on the environmental pollution to extract as many dollars as possible. They then just walked away, leaving the huge mess behind. They certified Texaco has done their share of the cleanup, because to do anything else would have highlighted they were doing nothing… and in fact they pocketed Texaco’s final millions in remediation payments without completing any of the agreed clean up. It is a sad story, that is repeated across many of the earth extraction industries. Internationals make deals with a 3rd world countries leadership, that leadership grabs all the money (making the majority of locals life’s worse), and then everything is dropped when the moneys runs out. Does this completely absolve Texaco (Chevron), no, but these is lots of shame to go around.

Just another example of greedy first world corporations pillaging third world countries, leaving vast destruction in their wake, and denying any responsibility after the fact. The poor in those countries are left to pick up the pieces of their poisoned landscape.

Fake news

@3avd+1gKZgv7R: Copy and paste withouto atribution = bad form!

Chevron’s legal strategy is masterminded by Gibson Dunn, a notoriously aggressive corporate law firm that the Montana supreme court rebuked in 2007, in a different case, for “legal thuggery” and “actual malice”. Randy Mastro, a former federal prosecutor and aide to New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, leads the firm’s Chevron file. A “merciless litigator”, according to the New Yorker, Mastro was once described as “the only person in the Giuliani administration who made the mayor seem like a nice guy”.

In an amazon book review by Philip Schoenberg of "Law of the Jungle...", the simple best (balanced) synopsis of this whole mess that I have read:
"https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B00JCSCXG0/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_paging_btm_next_3?pageNumber=3"

Many news organizations have run stories on this over the years generally painting Chevron (Texico) in a bad light, and there is no doubt there are some real messes from oil development on Ecuadorian indigenous lands. The problem, however, lies with Petroecuador and the Ecuadorian government. Petroecuador (wholly owned by the government of Ecuador) accepted payment of assets and cash from Texico to cover cleanup, but few of these funds were used for that purpose. Petroecuador then continued to develop many of these sites over the following years and make the messes much worse. High officials in the Ecuadorian government extracted most of the cash generated by oil development for their personal use, leaving few benefits for the Ecuadorian people (an old story in most extraction industries). Enter American attorney Donziger initiating a law suit funded by a new investor model looking for a huge pay day, but he needed to get all the blame put on Chevron rather than Petroecuador (which had reality little cash). What followed was a sorry tale of bribery, fraud, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and other crimes by Donziger trying to get his big pay day, even as some environmental activists held up Donziger as a modern day Robinhood for indigenous peoples. To be clear, I have no direct knowledge of any of these events, but interested readers could check out any of several books discussing this tale (some from one point of view and some from the other). For example compare Paul M. Barrett’s book, The Law of the Jungle: The $19 Billion Legal Battle Over Oil in the Rain Forest and the Lawyer Who’d Stop at Nothing to Win It, with Michael Goldhaber’s Crude Awakening: Chevron in Ecuador. Either way, it is a fascinating read and no matter what your predisposition you can’t help but be left feeling there is a lot more grey than black and white here.

This post seems to forget the 50+ witnesses against Donziger and the thousands of pages of documents that supported the Ecuadorian judgement was obtained by fraud and corruption. Guerra's testimony was only a tiny portion of the evidence against Donziger. When Texaco left the area there were less than 500 pits. Donziger has more than doubled the actual number over time as he exagerats for his benefit. The World Court also found fraud and has yet to award damages to Chevron. Ecuador has also admitted to the fraud. Time to move on.

"Chevron’s accusation that the judgment was illegitimate relied heavily on testimony by an Ecuadorian judge, Alberto Guerra, whom Chevron relocated to the US and, as of 2015, paid a $12,000 monthly salary. Guerra testified that the plaintiffs had bribed him to sway the Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron. Guerra later recanted much of his claim – admitting, Vice News reported in 2015, that “there is no evidence to corroborate allegations of a bribe or a ghostwritten judgment, and that large parts of his sworn testimony … were exaggerated and, in other cases, simply not true”."

The Ecuador situation has been solved by the courts for years now. Time for everyone to move on.

All that matters is the court of public opinion. Chevron is guilty of pollution and refuses to stand up for it.
This makes us look really bad.

The Ecuadorian court was proven to have been bribed and who also in collusion with the government that made the majority of the mess. This is why no other court in the world would support that judgement, despite being heard in USA, Canada, Europe, and many other venues including the world court. Nice try, but it was determined by the USA courts that the pratiffs committed fraud and the lead attorney was sentenced to jail. Maybe it is time Ecuador starts cleaning up its own mess, starting by using all the moneys those in the government stole.

You could t be more wrong. The only jurisdiction appropriate for the case ruled against Chevron to the tune of billions. chevron doesn’t respect the rule of law outside the US.

"Chevron destroyed pristine rain forest" ... please, this has been litigated to death in every juristiction that would hear it .... and the charges dismissed. It is time to focus on Petroecuador and the Ecuadorian government, who did the greatest damage to their own country long after Texico exited! Those who tried to use private investor funds to litigate these issues to generate huge legal fees for themselves proved to be corrupt and the lead attorney faced jail time for his unethical actions. The whole enterprise was a black eye to responsible environmental legal actions. It all had nothing to do with real concern for indigenous people who were harmed.

Chevron destroyed pristine rain forest and native land including rivers and lakes. There is no excuse for all the dumping of produced water and u lined pits.

Ecuador pollution is terrible, but the worst site are those run by Petroecuador long after Texico departed. There is nothing for Chevron to "settle", as Texico already paid Ecuador for remedication as they departed and most of those moneys were correpted (deverted) by the Ecuador government.

Oil is bad, said the group of environmentalists, as they all filled the tanks of their 4x4 to drive from their week day city jobs for a weekend in the “wilderness”.

The Ecuador pollution is terrible. We should settle and move on.