Ecuador and Chevron-Texaco
By Joshua Bernard

Oil Pollution in the Texaco Oil Field in Lago Agrio, Ecuador (2007), Courtesy of Julien Gomba

When a consortium of foreign multinationals discovered crude oil in Ecuador in the late 1960’s, Lago Agrio was among the first oil towns to be carved from the depths of the Amazon. Literally “Sour Lake” and also known as Nueva Loja, the sprawling municipality has become an unlikely target for international media attention. There, approaching the Colombian border in the oil-abundant province of Sucumbíos, the world’s largest environmental lawsuit found its way to a small local courthouse.

Maria Aguinda v. Texaco Inc., which was first filed in 1993 on behalf of 30,000 indigenous and colonist plaintiffs, alleges a variety of social and environmental claims against a subsidiary of the US-based Texaco Petroleum Company for its oil production operations during a 25-year contract with the Ecuadorian government. Over the course of its tenure in Ecuador, the plaintiffs allege, Texaco created the worst oil-related environmental disaster in history by purposefully disposing over 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater and about 17 million gallons of crude oil into the Amazon.[1] In return, Cristóbal Bonifaz, the plaintiffs’ former lead attorney, estimated that Texaco lowered its expenses to save upwards of $4 billion.[2] A 2010 report by Ricardo Cabrera, a court-appointed scientist, estimated that at least 1,400 people in the region had died of cancer resulting from oil contamination and recommended Chevron Corporation, the parent company of Texaco, pay damages of $27 billion.[3]

The case was originally filed in New York under the Alien Tort Statute, an obscure section of the United States Code that foreign citizens have used to hold American companies accountable for human rights abuses committed abroad (although this will likely change after the recent Supreme Court ruling in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum). More than two thousand miles from its evidence and witnesses, the suit was dismissed in New York and re-filed in Ecuador in 2003.

The class-action plaintiffs seek “…compensatory and punitive damages, and equitable relief, to remedy the pollution and contamination of the plaintiffs’ environment and the personal injuries and property damage caused thereby.”[4] To the plaintiffs, the case represents the first time indigenous groups have “…forced a multinational corporation to stand trial in their own country for violating their human rights.”[5]

The defendant, on the other hand, claims that these allegations are wholly false and that Maria Aguinda represents a fraudulent conspiracy. According to Chevron Corporation, the Ecuadorian government released its subsidiary from liability after it completed a multi-million dollar environmental remediation. Then, it turned its operations over to Petroecuador, the country’s state-run enterprise. It is Petroecuador, Chevron asserts, along with the Ecuadorian government, that retains legal responsibility for the environmental impacts of the extractive infrastructure in Ecuador. Regarding human health challenges, the defendant also claims that scientific evidence supports poor infrastructure, hygiene, and local diets as the true underlying factors.[6]

After eight years of tumultuous litigation in Ecuador, the case reached a critical checkpoint in February of 2011 when Ecuadorian Judge Nicolas Zambrano Lozada found Chevron liable for almost $9 billion in damages. He assigned an additional, punitive fine of 100% of the damages if Chevron failed to issue a public apology for its behavior in Ecuador.[7] Because Chevron has no assets in Ecuador, the plaintiffs filed actions to enforce the judgment in Canada and Brazil, both of which are pending.

Almost two decades since Maria Aguinda’s original filing, impacted members of Ecuador’s Oriente region have yet to see redress for their suffering. Their struggle represents how class action litigation can be one retroactive method of seeking environmental justice in Latin America. More generally, shining a spotlight on remote areas of the Ecuadorian Amazon continues to illustrate the social and environmental consequences of utilizing natural resources, and how extraction and consumption can affect diverse communities across the globe.