Outside the New York federal courthouse on Oct 15, 2013, Ecuadorians and their supporters gather to protest the Chevron lawsuit. Credit: Samuel Oakford/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 5 2014 (IPS)

In the latest twist in a 21-year-old environmental pollution case, a U.S. federal judge Tuesday ruled that the victims of massive oil spillage and their U.S. attorney could not collect on a nine-billion-dollar judgement by Ecuador’s supreme court against the Chevron Corporation.

In a racketeering case brought by the U.S. oil giant, the judge found that the lawyer, Steven Donziger, and his associates had used bribery and falsified evidence to prevail against Chevron in Ecuador’s courts and thus should not be permitted to collect damages.“Misconduct on the part of a couple of lawyers... is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for a corporation that has committed massive toxic contamination.” -- Marco Simons

“It is distressing that the course of justice was perverted,” the District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in a nearly 500-page ruling.

“There is no ‘Robin Hood’ defense to illegal and wrongful conduct,” he went on. “And the defendants’ ‘this-is-the-way-it-is-done-in-Ecuador’ excuses – actually a remarkable insult to the people of Ecuador – do not help them.”

Chevron applauded the judgement “as a resounding victory,” while Donziger and his attorneys said they would take the ruling to the same appeals court that overturned a similar judgement in the case rendered by Kaplan in 2011. At that time, Chevron appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Kaplan’s original ruling, but the Court rejected the appeal without comment.

Donziger himself called Kaplan’s latest judgement, which followed a six-week trial conducted late last year, “an appalling decision resulting from a deeply flawed proceeding that overturns a unanimous ruling by Ecuador’s Supreme Court. …We are confident we will be fully vindicated in the U.S., as we have been in Ecuador.”

The case was first filed in the U.S. federal court in 1993 on behalf of 30,000 mostly indigenous residents of the Lago Agrio region of the Ecuadorean Amazon where Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, had operated continuously from the 1960s until 1992. For much of that period, it worked in partnership with Petroecuador, which took over all of Texaco’s operations in the region when the U.S. oil giant left.

The plaintiffs claim that Texaco dumped more than 70 billion litres of toxic liquids, left some 910 waste pits filled with toxic sludge, and flared millions of cubic metres of toxic gases – poisoning the environment in one of the most biologically diverse areas in South America and creating serious health problems, including an unusually high incidence of cancer, for people living in the region.

Apparently concerned that U.S. courts would be more sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ case, Texaco persuaded Judge Jed Rakoff to have the case transferred to Ecuador in 2002 — when it was ruled by a conservative government eager for foreign investment — on condition that the company waive certain defences, such as the expiration of the statute of limitations, and ensure that any judgement would be enforceable in the U.S. The Ecuadorean case was filed the following year.

Chevron has long argued that the damages cited by the plaintiffs are exaggerated and that, in any case, Texaco extinguished its obligations when it carried out a 40-million- dollar environmental remediation project as part of a 1995 agreement with the Ecuadorean government that covered 37.5 percent of the well sites and waste pits in the concession area.

The remaining sites were to be cleaned up by Petroecuador, according to Chevron.

But the plaintiffs, who are backed by a number of local and international green groups, have argued that Chevron, having drilled all of the original sites, also remains responsible for Petroecuador’s portion, as well as for the continuing health and other impacts of its operations that are not covered by the 1995 agreement.

The trial court in Ecuador ruled against Chevron and granted the plaintiffs, who were represented by Donziger and his associates, an 18 billion dollar judgement. The country’s Supreme Court subsequent upheld the judgement but reduced the damages to 9.5 billion dollars.

Chevron, however, has sought to prevent the plaintiffs from collecting any of the money, by, among other steps, withdrawing all of its assets from Ecuador and initiating a racketeering suit against Donziger and his team based on its charges that they used bribery and other corrupt methods to win the case and extort billions of dollars from the company.

To sustain those charges, it subpoenaed tens of thousands of documents, emails, and other materials from Donziger and other lawyers, as well as activist groups that supported the case. It even subpoenaed out-takes from a 2009 documentary produced by film-maker Joe Berlinger, “Crude,” about the case.

In his testimony last November, Donziger himself admitted making mistakes, such as concealing his interactions with and payments to a court-appointed expert witness who produced a report on which the Ecuadorean courts relied for the assessment of damages.

One former Ecuadorean judge testified for Chevron that plaintiffs paid him to ghostwrite opinions for the presiding judge who had been promised half a million dollars by Donziger for a favourable ruling. Both Donziger and the presiding judge, Nicolas Zambrano, vehemently denied those charges.

Nonetheless, Kaplan, who has never questioned the extent of the environmental damage wrought by the oil companies’ operations in the region, ruled in favour of Chevron, noting that “an innocent defendant is no more entitled to submit false evidence, to co-opt and pay off a court-appointed expert or to coerce or bribe a judge or jury than a guilty one.” He also noted that Donziger himself stood to win more than 600 million dollars in contingency fees.

If upheld, Kaplan’s ruling would prevent Donziger and the plaintiffs from collecting any damages from Chevron in U.S. courts. It also requires them to turn over any damages against Chevron they might collect in foreign courts to the company.

The plaintiffs have brought cases in three countries where Chevron has major operations and assets — Canada, Brazil, and Argentina – to enforce the Ecuadorean judgment, and Chevron’s CEO Tuesday told reporters Tuesday that Kaplan’s ruling should bolster the case in those countries.

The judgement, according to Deepak Gupta, who represented Donziger, amounted to “what is in effect a global anti-collection injunction that would preclude enforcement of a judgement from one country in every jurisdiction.” He noted that was one of the main reasons why the appeals court overturned Kaplan’s 2011 decision.

Marco Simons, legal director of EarthRights International, told IPS Tuesday’s judgement was vulnerable on other grounds as well. He said the law over whether the kinds of injunctions issued by Kaplan could be employed under the federal racketeering law remains unsettled.

In addition, he noted, the fact that Kaplan had found that the Ecuadorean judicial system had not provided due process “offers a good basis for re-filing the substantive case against Chevron in U.S. courts.”

“And even if all of what Judge Kaplan said about the fraudulent conduct of the attorneys was true, the answer shouldn’t necessarily be that Chevron gets away with no liability for what it has done in the Ecuadorean Amazon,” he said. “Misconduct on the part of a couple of lawyers, which is what Judge Kaplan suggested, is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for a corporation that has committed massive toxic contamination.”

Fifty Greenpeace activists were arrested on Dec. 9 during a symbolic action of "digging for gold" in front of the Romanian parliament. Credit: Courtesy of Greenpeace Romania

By Claudia Ciobanu
BUCHAREST, Dec 10 2013 (IPS)

Authorities in Romania have been attempting to bulldoze through public opposition to push through controversial extractive projects such as gold mining at Rosia Montana and shale gas drilling at Pungesti.

However, amendments to the national mining law, which would have given Rosia Montana Gold Corporation extraordinary powers to implement its project to build Europe’s biggest gold mine in the Apuseni mountains, failed to be passed by the Romanian parliament Dec. 10 mainly because of a lack of quorum.

Tuesday’s vote was part of a long-term strategy by the Romanian government to give the project a green light despite public opposition and legal objections.

While the parliament voted, hundreds of protesters occupied the headquarters of the ombudsman in Bucharest and camped outside the offices of political parties in the western city of Cluj.

If the law had been adopted, projects involving the extraction and processing of mineral resources could have been declared “of exceptional public interest” allowing project promoters to receive extraordinary powers, such as the right to conduct expropriations, skip permitting procedures for working on archaeological sites, and be reissued permits within 60 days if they were cancelled by courts.

The new law represented a means for the authorities to push the Rosia Montana project – and potentially others like it – in a less than transparent manner after a previous attempt to give special powers to Gold Corporation had been dropped due to public pressure.

In August, the Romanian government led by Social Democratic Prime Minister Victor Ponta proposed a draft law that declared the Rosia Montana gold project one “of national interest” and gave Gold Corporation extraordinary powers – expropriations, automatic reissuing of permits, etc.

The draft law sparked massive protests in Romania starting Sept. 1, with tens of thousands taking to the streets for weeks in a row across the country.

Faced with such discontent, the special parliamentary commission analysing the Rosia Montana law rejected the text in November, arguing that the project would be illegal on multiple counts.

In appearance, the decision by the special commission meant the project had been rejected.

Yet as the commission announced its conclusions, the Romanian parliament – dominated by Ponta’s party – was preparing amendments to the mining law which meant potentially giving all mining companies the same controversial extraordinary powers intended to be granted to Gold Corporation.

The political bet was that the amended mining law would be passed under the radar, as the text did not single out Rosia Montana and some of the public thought the project dead with the rejection of the first law.

It was only on Monday Dec. 9 that the public learned that the mining law would be voted on by parliament the next day. The full text of the new law was not available to the public at the time of the Tuesday Dec. 10 vote.

On Monday, the mining law was debated by parliamentary commissions. According to Stefania Simion, a lawyer who has been working for years on the Rosia Montana case and who observed the proceedings, most of the parliamentarians did not have a chance to study the amendments and there was virtually no debate.

In the Rosia Montana case, Romanian authorities are using secrecy and legal artifice to try to push through a project facing significant public opposition.

In the case of drilling for shale gas at Pungesti, in the eastern county of Vaslui, they are relying instead on policing.

During the months of battle over Rosia Montana, at the other end of the country a new campaign was born: in October, as U.S. energy giant Chevron was preparing to start exploratory works for shale gas in Pungesti, locals mobilised to stop the company’s operations. They set up a camp next to the land where Chevron was preparing to install exploratory drills and tried to block access by machinery to the site.

The villagers, mostly farmers, were worried about the impacts that fracking – hydraulic fracturing, the technique used to extract natural gas from shale – on a perimeter inside their village could have on their lands and water. Some told the Romanian media they had seen movies about the negative effects of fracking in U.S. communities.

Opposition to shale gas exploration – albeit not massive – has grown gradually in Romania over the past two years as successive governments gave exploration permits to several companies; rejecting fracking was one of the themes brought up by protesters during the January 2012 anti-austerity protests and this year’s Rosia Montana demonstrations.

When locals in Pungesti started protesting against Chevron in October, anti-Rosia Montana activists were already mobilised in major cities and ready to offer some support.

The villagers’ attempts to block Chevron operations and the police response were broadcast live on the internet from the early days. The national media also reported on Pungesti, after being criticised for failing to properly cover the anti-Rosia Montana mobilisation.

In their turn having learned from the Rosia Montana case, Romanian authorities responded decisively from the start to prevent the opposition from escalating. For weeks now, the hundreds of villagers protesting at Pungesti are outnumbered by military police deployed on the ground. Tens of people have been arrested. Protesters complain of police brutality and systematic harassment.

“As I camped at Pungesti last Friday, I saw the police attacking people, I witnessed at least four people who had to be saved by the crowds from police abuse,” retired engineer Gherghina Vladescu told IPS.

Responding to the accusations of police brutality in Pungesti, Romania’s minister of interior, Radu Stroe, told the national media Dec. 8: “Others were violent too, they broke down fences…Everyone is free to protest in this country as long as they do it peacefully.”

The minister was referring to the protesters’ tearing down Dec. 7 of a wire fence protecting the area for which Chevron was granted the exploration permit.

In November, villagers from Pungesti submitted an official complaint to the National Anti-Corruption Agency in which they accuse the mayor of Pungesti, who leased land to Chevron, of obtaining property rights over it through an illegal land exchange.

Since protests began at Pungesti, Chevron has suspended operations repeatedly saying that it “is committed to having constructive and positive relations with communities where it conducts operations”. Each time, it resumed works; this month, it filed criminal complaints against villagers for destruction of property.

On Dec. 8., Romanian authorities declared Pungesti “a special public safety zone”. This was needed to justify the ongoing police practices of checking all cars coming into Pungesti, keeping guard outside homes, ID-ing people at will and removing protesters from the site.

Claudiu Craciun, one of the prominent figures in the Rosia Montana and shale gas protest movements, said the situation in Pungesti brought to mind a dystopian future: “Imagine for a second a country where hundreds of industrial perimeters are permanently guarded by tens of thousands of police and private contractors.”

Resistance will continue, he said, adding, “The more the government tries to appear in charge of things, the weaker it is. Legitimacy and the use of force are in an inverse proportionality relation to one another.”

Outside the New York federal courthouse, Ecuadorians and their supporters gather to protest the Chevron lawsuit. Credit: Samuel Oakford/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
NEW YORK, Oct 15 2013 (IPS)

Two years after they were awarded 18 billion dollars by an Ecuadorian court for environmental damage caused by Chevron in the Amazonian rainforest, a group of indigenous villagers and their U.S. lawyer went on trial Tuesday in New York, accused by the oil company of bribery and racketeering.

Chevron was found liable in 2011 for an ecological catastrophe caused by pollution released in the 1970s and 1980s by Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001 and for which they agreed to assume legal obligations.“Every day, family members and loved ones are sickened because of the contamination." -- Javier Piaguaje, a Secoya Indian from Ecuador

Chevron has refused to pay the penalty.

Because Chevron has no assets in Ecuador, the plaintiffs have attempted to collect the fine abroad.

The New York suit, filed under the RICO statute, a strategy made famous during Mafia prosecutions in the 1970s, seeks to block enforcement of the 2011 decision in U.S. courts, where Chevron maintains ample reserves to foot the bill.

The complaint claims the lawyer, Steven Donziger, and a group of Ecuadorians representing the 30,000 original Amazonian plaintiffs attempted to persuade and corrupt a series of Ecuadorian judges who heard the case in an attempt to extort Chevron.

Donziger and the Ecuadorian defendants deny any wrongdoing and assert the lawsuit is another expensive legal distraction that the 230-billion-dollar corporation can afford to tack onto what has become a 20-year saga of litigation.

Outside the courthouse, Ecuadorians and their supporters gathered to protest the case.

Demonstrators chanted and held photographs depicting shiny, blackened earth, open runoff pits and frail jungle residents who they said were dying from cancers that resulted from the estimated 18 million gallons of crude oil and 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater that was leaked or illegally pumped into pristine jungle ecosystems around the Lago Agrio field the northwest of the country.

“We’re here in front of the courts against this large corporation,” said one of the defendants, Javier Piaguaje, a Secoya Indian who lives along the heavily polluted and now-ironically named “Aguarico” River.

Dressed in traditional Secoya garb, Piaguaje told the crowd the lasting effects of the spill were ravaging his community.

“Every day, family members and loved ones are sickened because of the contamination,” said Piaguaje.

“We’re here to show what’s really going on in the Amazon,” he added, before turning to enter the courthouse and mount his defence.

The judge in the case, Lewis Kaplan, has long been a thorn in the side of indigenous plaintiffs.

Earlier this month, Kaplan decided Donziger and his co-defendents were not entitled to a trial by jury.

“This trial is a travesty of justice,” said Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch, an environmental justice group that assists the Ecuadorian claim.

“Chevron has spent years to have a trial where the original plaintiffs are not allowed to discuss the evidence,” Paz y Miño told IPS.

“There is absolutely no evidence of fraud on behalf of the plaintiff,” he added.

A spokesperson for the defendants in the New York case, Han Shan, told IPS the lawsuit took a lot of chutzpah on the part of Chevron.

“They’ve done a great job of media and political jujitsu in taking things that we were alleging, Chevron being totally corrupt, putting pressure on judges, bribery, trying to entrap people, using dirty contracters and said that we did it,” said Shan.

In 2009, Diego Borja, a Chevron contractor in Ecuador, was caught trying to entrap the presiding judge, Juan Nunez, by videotaping himself offering Nunez a bribe. Chevron has since paid for Borja to move to the United States and supplies him with a monthly stipend.

The Chevron media relations website was down for maintenance at the time of this article and IPS was unable to reach the company for comment.

However, on the company’s website devoted to the lawsuit, Morgan Crinklaw, a spokesman for Chevron, says, “We believe that any jurisdiction that observes the rule of law will find that the judgment is illegal and unenforceable because it’s a product of fraud.”

The trial taking place in Manhattan hinges in large part on Donziger’s personal diary and hours of outtakes from Joe Berlinger’s 2009 film, “Crude,” which Chevron claims show Donziger considered some of the environment evidence in the lawsuit to be “all smoke and mirrors.”

Donziger has said his quotes were taken out of context.

Judge Kaplan has already decided in favour of Chevron once.

In March 2011, Kaplan issued a global injunction that blocked enforcement of the Ecuadorian judgment, effectively kneecapping indigenous claims.

In January 2012, however, the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York overturned the injunction, which opened the door once more for the original plaintiffs to enforce the 18-billion-dollar decision in U.S. courts.

That decision led Chevron team of over 100 lawyers to cobble together a last ditch defence strategy in form of the RICO suit, which they worked hard to have heard in Kaplan’s courtroom.

Shan isn’t optimistic about Kaplan presiding over the case.

“I don’t feel Kaplan will give us a fair hearing,” said Shan. “I think he’s already made up his mind.”

But should Kaplan rule against the indigenous community and issue a global injunction once more, Shan is confident the 2^nd Circuit will strike it down.

“The 2nd Circuit has been clear that the U.S. District Court is not an appellate court for the Ecuadorian judiciary and there’s absolutely no jurisdiction for that kind of injunction,” said Shan.

Oil giant Chevron's corporate offices in Houston Texas are housed in the old Enron buildings at 1400 Smith St. Credit: Jonathan McIntosh/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 29 2013 (IPS)

At an annual shareholder meeting held Wednesday, upper-level management for the oil conglomerate Chevron faced renewed questioning over its record-setting political contributions during last year’s national election.

At the meeting, a shareholder resolution on the issue focused on Chevron’s alleged refusal to explain how the company’s political spending has benefited shareholders, particularly given the excoriating criticism the contribution has garnered, and called for a cessation of the practice.

The resolution failed to pass, however, receiving just four percent of shareholder backing.

Of particular interest has been a lump payment of 2.5 million dollars spent by a Chevron subsidiary. Given that Chevron receives government contracts, the contribution’s timing (in the last weeks of the election) and its beneficiary (a group focused on electing Republicans to the House of Representatives) have raised concerns that the payment could have violated U.S. law.

Chevron is wrapping up “its most expensive year of political spending to date,” Green Century Capital Management, which filed the resolution, stated Tuesday, just ahead of the shareholder meeting. The advisory firm is now formally urging the company to “refrain entirely from political spending, arguing that doing so would protect against risks to shareholder value”.

Chevron, the second-largest oil company in the United States, reportedly spent a total of 3.9 million dollars during the 2012 campaign. Yet it was the 2.5-million-dollar payment to a group called the Congressional Leadership Fund that has become the focus of much interest, in part because it is the largest single corporate political contribution to date.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a controversial ruling that lifted restrictions on most corporate election-related spending. The decision made the 2012 presidential election the most expensive to date.

It has also sparked a significant public backlash: according to a September poll, more than four-fifths of U.S. respondents would support limiting election spending. Further, at least 14 states have now passed resolutions urging a constitutional amendment to overturn the judicial decision, known as Citizens United.

Against this backdrop, Chevron has been widely pilloried for having racked up the largest-yet corporate political contribution since the Citizens United decision was handed down.

“This issue is important for our members because Chevron has not been willing or able to demonstrate value to shareholders of its political expenditures,” Leslie Samuelrich, a senior vice-president with Green Century, told IPS.

“Given high negative press coverage that Chevron’s contribution garnered for the company, we feel that it’s important that Chevron explain why it made this contribution, as well as a long list of growing political contributions over the years. They weren’t able to do so, so we went forward with the resolution.”

Following Wednesday’s vote, Samuelrich lauded the results, telling the media the process represented “a turning of the tide”.

Risky business

The Citizens United decision appears to have led to an immediate response from Chevron. The company has reported spending a little more than a million dollars on political contributions in 2008 and a little less than that amount in 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled.

Two years later, those figures have almost quadrupled. In addition, watchdog groups have noted that around 90 percent of corporate spending in the 2012 election went to Republicans.

“This appears to be very risky business to us,” Samuelrich says, noting that Green Century has filed similar resolutions this year with the oil company ExxonMobil, Bank of America and 3M, a manufacturing conglomerate.

“We spoke with Chevron earlier this year, but that dialogue resulted in no change whatsoever – they didn’t offer any analysis about why they made the initial contribution, nor any evaluation of the impact of their highly publicised political spending.”

Further, the company continues to be dogged by allegations that the Congressional Leadership Fund contribution could have been illegal in the first place, given Chevron’s contracts with the government.

“Under a legislative prohibition known as ‘pay to play’, government contractors can’t make these types of contributions,” Kelly Ngo, a legislative assistant at Public Citizen, a consumer watch group, told IPS. “The law is pretty clear on this.”

In March, Public Citizen and several environment groups filed a joint complaint on the issue with the Federal Election Commission, though the commission has yet to respond. The company, meanwhile, has pointed out that the payment was made through a subsidiary that doesn’t hold a government contract.

In documentation sent to IPS, Chevron’s board unanimously recommended that shareholders vote against the resolution to halt political spending.

“Chevron exercises its fundamental right and responsibility to participate in the political process … [and] advocates positions on proposed policies that will affect the Company’s ability to realize strong financial returns while meeting the world’s growing demand for energy,” the Chevron board states.

“[The] Board is confident that the Company’s political activities are aligned with its stockholders’ long-term interests.”

Ecuador legacy

Two additional resolutions floated by Chevron shareholders on Wednesday dealt with longstanding litigation against the company’s predecessor, Texaco, for having wilfully dumped oil wastes in a remote part of Ecuador from the 1960s until the 1990s. (Extensive documentation on the case can be found here, while Chevron’s responses can be found here.)

While the Ecuadorian courts have repeatedly assessed the company for 19 billion dollars in liability, Chevron has taken an aggressive line in refusing the penalty, saying a multi-million-dollar remediation has already taken place. In an unusual step, in December the company even subpoenaed some of its own shareholders, alleging that they were colluding with the Ecuadorians.

Shareholders floated a related resolution, impugning the Chevron management for the ongoing Ecuador situation, at last year’s meeting.

Although that move was rejected, it did win the backing of around 40 percent of shareholders – slightly more than was ultimately received during Wednesday’s vote, indicating continued shareholder interest to resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, who allege health problems and ruined lands, are now suing Chevron in other countries in which the company operates. Following on an order earlier this month, Chevron CEO John Watson will now have to testify in a fraud-related counter-suit filed by the company against the Ecuadorians.

This year, activists have increasingly targeted Watson himself, singling him out for having originally overseen the acquisition of Texaco.

“My parents both died from cancer due to Chevron’s contamination,” Servio Curipoma, from San Carlos in Ecuador’s northeast, told Chevron shareholders and management Wednesday.

“I am still fighting for justice so that no one else will have to suffer the pain they did, and the loss I have. Chevron has lied to its shareholders, to the world, to me. I’m here on behalf of all of us to say that CEO Watson should be fired.”

Protesters came from environmental justice organisations such as Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action, as well as Ecuador, Nigeria and Angola. Credit: Judith Scherr/IPS

By Judith Scherr
SAN RAMON, California, U.S., May 31 2012 (IPS)

More than 100 people gathered Wednesday outside the gates of Chevron’s sprawling headquarters in upscale San Ramon in the San Francisco Bay area of California, where police and security barred those without passes to the shareholder meeting from entering.

The activists’ message was inscribed on a giant puppet and on the many placards they waved at passing shareholders: “Occupy Chevron and Big Oil,” “Chevron Makes Orphans,” Fracking is Environmental Rape,” “Chevron: Clean UP and Get Out of Metro Manila.”

Participants came from traditional environmental justice organisations such as Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action; their numbers were bolstered by the 99 Percent Power group, a several-months-old coalition that links the Occupy Movement with the fight against corporate greed and targets shareholders meetings.

Inside Chevron headquarters, a more sedate crowd applauded Chevron’s CEO/Chairman of the Board John Watson, who touted last year’s record corporate earnings of 26.9 billion dollars, the company’s improving safety record and Chevron’s efforts to enhance communities they work in.

“Abundant affordable energy raises living standards,” Watson said.

While some came to cheer Chevron’s progress, a number of shareholders and their proxies brought questions and criticisms focused particularly on the environmental degradation they say Chevron causes in its exploration for and extraction of gas and oil around the globe.

In particular, concern was expressed over contamination of parts of the Ecuadorean rain forest by Texaco, Chevron’s predecessor, and a subsequent 18-billion-dollar judgment against Chevron. In January, an Ecuadorean appeals court upheld the judgment.

Watson, however, told shareholders that the court decision is “an example of a fraud being perpetrated on our company”. He said, in fact, the environmental damage in question was caused by the government-owned oil company Petroecuador, which is spending 70 million dollars to remediate “the consequences of their actions”. Chevron will not pay the judgment, he said.

One group of shareholders took on the Ecuador question by calling for better board oversight. They made a formal proposal to improve management by separating the functions of chief executive officer and chairman of the board.

“Mr. John Watson is his own boss,” said Simon Billenness, speaking to shareholders in favour of the proposal on behalf of the Universal Universalist Association.

Billenness criticised a board decision to approve a 75 percent raise for Chevron’s General Counsel, which they said was based on an assessment of “outstanding management” of the case in Ecuador.

“What is ‘outstanding’ about the case is that the Ecuadorian courts have upheld an unprecedented 18-billion-dollar judgment against the company,” Billenness said, adding that plaintiffs plan to pursue Chevron’s assets in various countries outside Ecuador.

Separating the functions of the CEO and board chair would promote more independent oversight, Billenness said, noting that while the proposal lost, it did get 38 percent, up from 14 percent when the shareholders voted on the same question in 2008.

Other proposals impacting safety and the environment also failed. One would have reserved one board slot for an environmental expert; another called for better accountability around safety issues; and a third proposed preparation of a report to investors on the risks associated with hydraulic fracturing, a controversial process of extracting oil or gas from shale rock that involves shooting water, sand and chemicals down a well.

The shareholder question period got testy. First to line up at the microphones were two Watson supporters.

Shelton Ehrlich blasted those who brought the pro-environment, pro-safety proposals to the meeting. “They were brought to us by left-wing and corrupt groups,” he said, asking Watson, “Why do you put up with this crap?”

Susan Rutherford followed by thanking the corporation “for fighting the shakedown in Ecuador”.

Most of the speakers who followed travelled to San Ramon from the areas they said were contaminated by Chevron.

Luz Cusangua, who is from the damaged region in Ecuador, called on Chevron to take responsibility. “Our children are deformed, while you are celebrating profits,” she said, speaking through a translator.

Emem Okon of the Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Center in Nigeria told shareholders about a fire at a Chevron oil installation that burned for 46 days, contaminating the area and destroying the people’s livelihoods.

Cristóvão Luemba from Angola said, “Chevron’s policies in Cabinda are endangering our communities, particularly the fisheries.” He charged Chevron with daily unreported oil spills.

“When are you going to start acting right and stop thinking about your profits?” he asked.

Henry Clark of the West County Toxics Coalition described problems stemming from the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California, some 35 miles from San Ramon. He talked about the “block toxic smoke” that lasted a week during a recent flare-up at the refinery, and asked the board not to further burden the already overburdened people of Richmond with increased emissions from a new facility being planned.

The Richmond refinery is the largest single stationary source of greenhouse gases in California, according to Antonia Juhasz, writing in the “True Cost of Chevron“, an alternative annual report on Chevron.

Watson responded to each speaker. In Nigeria, Chevron addresses community needs through job creation and microlending programs, he said, and in Angola, the company takes responsibility for the spills that are Chevron’s.

“We have a policy to report every spill,” he said, arguing however that most of the spills are not Chevron’s. He talked about jobs programmes in Richmond and said that city has “some of the cleanest air in the Bay Area”.

Much to the chagrin expressed loudly by a number of activists in the meeting, João Antonio de Moraes, coordinator with the United Federation of Oil Workers in Brazil, was not admitted to the shareholders’ meeting. (He was told there was a problem with his proxy, though he said it was in order.)

In his place, Antonia Juhasz of the True Cost of Chevron coalition told shareholders about a spill in Brazil for which Chevron will be asked to pay around 22 billion dollars.

Watson took responsibility, to a degree. “We regret the 2,400 barrel spill,” he said, explaining that, working closely with the Brazilian government, they were able to stop the spill within four days.

“There was no damage to the environment,” he said, adding, “We’re not perfect. We have made mistakes and we learn from them.”

Unable to enter the meeting, Moraes addressed the activists on the sidewalk outside Chevron headquarters.

“We, Brazilian oil workers, we agree that Chevron is afraid of the people,” he said, speaking through a translator. “What they did on the coast of my country, on the beach outside Rio De Janeiro, a spill of almost a whole kilometre long, we’re going to demand that they pay for this….The force is with us, with the people, and not with the arrogance of Chevron.”