Last week, it was revealed that the supposed informant in the bribery case against the Ecuadorean officials deciding the $27 billion pollution case is a convicted felon. (Conspiring to traffic 275,000 pounds of marijuana, sic-ing his pit bull on a woman.)
It doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s lying about the bribery charge — just that he doesn’t seem to be the most ethical, upstanding person to begin with. How did he get involved in this lawsuit?
On the other hand, Ecuador, as an oil-producing country, does not seem to have learned anything substantial from the whole sorry episode, either. October saw increasing tensions between the indigenous Schuar people and government, which is now trying to develop new oil and mining sites on their land without their consent, and possibly privatize the water as well.
It’s hard to know what to feel about this saga. It’s tit-for-tat, like a ping-pong match with the people and land caught between Ecuador and Chevron. On the one hand, it is impossible to deny that there was major environmental damage and probably significant damage to the health of the local people because of Texaco’s sloppiness and malfeasance. It’s also true, it wasn’t by Chevron — they inherited it. It’s true that the operator was Texaco and they are usually legally responsible for such practices; it’s also true that Petroecuador was the majority stakeholder of the project(s), did know about the problems at the time, and did clear Texaco legally after a $40 million clean up job. And that the damage is visible today, oil is still being extracted, and Texaco and Chevron are long gone.
The real bone of contention in the Ecuador case is the price tag, $27 billion. It’s the equivalent to about ¼ of Ecuador’s entire GDP. If the number was just for environmental clean up, health care and compensation for those affected it would be much smaller. One thing that sticks in my mind is that the horrific spill of the Exxon Valdez resulted in a much smaller financial settlement — about 1/3 as much.
There seems to be this sentiment among the developing countries to, one way or the other, squeeze everything possible out of a multinational company, rather than just run the project right and responsibly as partners. Multinationals are seen as evil cash cows that it is okay to milk. It isn’t that they totally don’t deserve the image, it’s just that there is more to the equation, and those who milk are often not the most upright either — Ecuador also has serious corruption issues.
I am not a huge fan of oil (or other extraction) companies — I know they have done and will do a lot of extremely questionable things to preserve the bottom line. But I know everyone, when if comes to oil/gas/mining, goes totally crazy to get every last dime they can out of it, using contracts, legal action, enhanced security problems, criminality, anything possible. In this sad and bizarre case, perhaps it is in the best interest of those most affected — those sick and living on the land — to come up with a more balanced number without the padding and get them the money now.
