Ecuador: The People vs. Texaco

...that can be easily remediated within a short-term period...

...Texaco came to Ecuador in 1964...

...Indigenous groups immedi- )erated by the ately denounced the verbal accord, which does not specify costs, a time frame, or forms of reparation...

...Twenty years of deliberate technological omissions and contamination cannot be solved overnight," he says...

...These assaults on the rights of our peoples are declared acts of war," CONAIE president Luis Macas told Ecuadorian government officials...

...In addition to these leaks, she noted numerous other spills from connecting pipelines, wells and tanks...

...Now is the moment when we are harvesting the fruits of our work," says Garz6n...

...The government said that the accord meant that it didn't have to take Texaco to court, as it had earlier threatened...

...The suit was considered a long shot at best, since few successful precedents exist for foreign citizens suing transnational corporations in U.S...

...We will resist ecological terrorism and cultural violence when it comes to our territories...

...Environmental lawyer Judith Kimerling-representing Quichua and Cofdn Indians-has also joined the suit...

...Texaco's defense team is headed by former U.S...

...They have also presented a significant obstacle to the Ecuadorian government in its march along the path to total dependence on an oil-export economy...

...The HBT Agra study sets the price tag at $13.2 million for a clean-up of Texaco's pollution...

...The Cofanes have seen their population depleted from about 3,000 to only 300...

...On August 3, the government announced that it had reached an "informal" agreement with Texaco to clean up the environmental damage the company had wrought...

...But they are still dragging their feet on involving local people in the discussion of how the Texaco clean-up should be handled...

...Furthermore, by limiting their liability to the share of the profits the company received over the 20 years of the concession, Texaco has suggested in conversations with the Ecuadorian press that a settlement in the range of $5 million might be appropriate...

...courts...

...Onceabundant game were frightened away by explosions used in oil prospecting, or were hunted to extinction by oil workers and settlers...

...Their call for a greater voice in determining the course of their country's development policy can no longer be so easily quelled...

...The HBT Agra study confirmed that 41% of Texaco's well sites have a "high environmental liability" and that 60% of the company's waste pits have not been able to contain oil wastes...

...Due to political maneuvering between Texaco and the Ecuadorian government, the HBT Agra report still remains o. in "draft" form two years after it was originally commissioned...

...In response, Bonifaz' team of lawyers contended that the ineffectiveness of Ecuador's legal system in class-action suits and widespread prejudice against indigenous people in Ecuador preclude the plaintiffs from receiving a fair hearing in their own country...

...Federal Court have left Texaco reeling...

...A few miles north of town, an oil-well head sits in the center of a clearing...

...Shushufindi, a refinery town ringed by about 65 working oil wells, is a chaotic patchwork of muddy streets and tawdry shacks...

...In all, about 88% of the oil extracted from the Oriente through 1992 was pumped by Texaco and its partners...

...In 1990, Texaco shut down its operations, after pumping more than 1.2 billion barrels of crude oil from 325 wells drilled two miles deep beneath the Ecuadorian rainforest...

...Rivers and streams upon which indigenous people depended for fish turned black with oil...

...firms Amoco, Mobil, Oryx, Santa Fe Minerals, Triton Energy and Clapson, the United Kingdom's City, and the Ecuadorian company Tripetrol-directly affect national parks and other zones designated for ecological protection...

...With consumers and the media challenging Texaco's environmental record in Ecuador, the company has sent out a form letter stating that the company "complied with the prevailing laws and regulations" of Ecuador and "followed international oil field standards and practices...

...A barrel-chested colono-a mestizo settler-removes his shirt and kneels to bathe in the oily water...

...After 1977, when Gulf sold its holdings to the state oil company, CEPE, Texaco was allowed to keep only 37.5% of the oil it pumped, while the Ecuadorian government received 62.5...

...Alternative development scenarios for the Amazon-including ecotourism [see Ecotourism: A Sustainable Alternative, p. 9], the processing and marketing of rainforest pharmaceuticals, and agroforestry-are not in the government's plans...

...It was the government of Ecuador," the letter argues, "that chose to develop the country's natural resources to improve the ecoA Texaco site in Shushufindi which is now op Ecuadorian government...

...Sad fragments of what was once the richest tropical rainforest on the planet stand along the roadside...

...Texaco promised to install the latest technologies at its facilities, which the production contract stipulated would revert back to the Ecuadorian government in 1992...

...The government also granted the company a 20-year tax holiday...

...But from now on, othei companies entering the Oriente must confront the company's specter of irresponsible development and the widespread feeling that unregulated exploration and drilling cannot take place again...

...Paulina Garz6n, a member of Quito's environmental activist organization Acci6n Ecol6gica, has helped spearhead the campaign...

...offices...

...Shushufindi, where Texaco built its main Amazon refinery, was a Cofin indigenous village...

...Environmentalists say this amount would be grossly inadequate...

...Environmental Protection Agency (EPA...

...We had a limited, localized impact...

...Rusting oil drums have been carelessly discarded nearby...

...BY GLENN SWITKES The road from Lago Agrio to Shushufindi parallels the trans-Ecuadorian pipeline, a structure which throbs with the pulse of Ecuador's liquid wealth...

...In her 1990 book "Amazon Crude," a landmark study of Texaco's legacy, environmental lawyer Judith Kimerling sifted through Ecuadorian government documents ne of the 1,000 waste pits abandoned by Texac to quantify the damage Texaco had wrought...

...Women wash chickens in an oily stream near aco site in Shushufindi...

...The actions and the resources that are needed are immense...

...I'm not making excuses," Texaco Vice-President Yorick Fonseca insists...

...The government views the Texaco affair as an undesirable distraction from President Sixto Dur.n Ballen's master plan to double the country's oil production by 1996...

...Forming a coalition called the Campafia Amazonia por la Vida (Amazon for Life Campaign), environmental and indigenous activists called for a boycott of Texaco products, an appeal which was enthusiastically backed by their supporters in Europe and the United States...

...Doctors also found "an increased risk of serious and non-reversible health effects such as cancers and neurological and reproductive problems" in local communities which drink, bathe, and eat fish from the contaminated water supplies...

...The planned privatization of Petroecuador, spurred by a loan from the World Bank, would place critical decisions about oil-development planning in the hands of transnational corporations...

...The national debate about Texaco's responsibility to Ecuador really began once the company left the country...

...We do plan to remediate whatever damage is identified...

...Using environmental-management techniques far below international standards, the company severely polluted the Oriente-the Amazonian region in the eastern third of the country-and destroyed the lives of the indigenous people and small farmers who live there...

...When Texaco pulled out of Ecuador in 1992, Manuel Navarro, director of the Environmental Protection Unit of Petroecuador, CEPE's successor, proposed an independent "environmental audit" of Texaco's operations...

...Texaco also routinely burned excess gas (about 40 million cubic feet per day) and waste oil, which has fouled the pristine air of the Amazon...

...The Texaco affair has increased the credibility and visibility of environmentalists, indigenous peoples and other sectors of Ecuadorian civil society...

...We know how to defend ourselves...

...We cannot accept an arrangement in which there is no formal commitment," said a spokesperson for the Confederation of Indigenous Amazonians (CONFENIAE...

...By the time Texaco left Ecuador, oil ruled the nation's economy, generating over half of the government's income...

...What may be unique about the saga of Texaco in Ecuador is that increasing pressure on the company may force Texaco to clean up the waste it abandoned in the rainforest...

...The indigenous peoples of the Oriente-some of whom had their first contact with Spanish-speaking Ecuador during the oil boom-have been the most severely affected by Texaco's operations...

...Texaco set abysmal standards for oil development in Ecuador, standards which are now only slowly improving...

...In 1972, the company began construction of the transEcuadorian pipeline, an engineer6NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Glenn Switkes is a director of Amazonia Films...

...Critics say the study does not go far enough in fully assessing Texaco's responsibility to the land and people of the Ecuadorian Amazon...

...CESR's team of doctors, scientists and lawyers from Harvard University found levels ofUPDATE / ECUADOR cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as much as one thousand times greater than U.S...

...EPA safety guidelines...

...The car's tires squish along the oilsoaked road...

...All told, a gigantic spill of 16.8 million gallons resulted from these breaks-50% more than the Exxon Valdez spill...

...In addition, only 21 water samples were drawn from waterways downstream from Texaco facilities, which provide a truer indication of the impact on local populations than water samples collected onsite...

...The black pool is uncovered, unfenced, and unlined...

...Texaco's entry into the Oriente devastated the Siona, Secoya, Cofdn, Quichua, and Huaorani peoples, who were displaced from their traditional homelands with the arrival of the oil company, the Ecuadorian military, evangelical missionaries, and land-hungry settlers...

...Significantly, none of the indigenous people or farmers who claim health problems caused by Texaco's pollution were consulted for the HBT Agra study...

...Bell's first step was to argue that New York was an inappropriate venue for the suit, which he said should have been brought in Ecuador...

...No longer providing income to the state oil bureaucracy or jobs to locals, Texaco became the object of a campaign that brought together environmentalists, the indigenous movement, and Ecuadorian nationalists...

...Much of the two million acres of oil concessions are on indigenous lands...

...An environmental campaign in Ecuador, an international boycott, and a class-action lawsuit in U.S...

...Only token efforts have been made to consult and negotiate with the indigenous people on whose land the oil is found...

...There has also been a complete lack of public debate about whether the Ecuadorian economy should be so dependent on oil...

...The company received an exploration contract from the then-military government, which saw the development of the country's Amazon oil reserves as a way of augmenting the military's presence in border areas...

...The study also acknowledges that "Texaco's operations prior to 1990 were potentially not in compliance with Ecuadorian law...

...Each time it rains-and Ecuador's Amazon is one of the wettest places on earth-oil washes into roadside ditches, and from there into streams and rivers...

...According to Kimerling, Texas abandoned 1,000 uncovered oil-waste ponds, and discarded 20 billion gallons of toxic production waters and four million barrels of drilling mud without treatment...

...Texaco received another jolt in its efforts to close its books on Ecuador in a courtroom only a few miles from its Westchester headquarters...

...This has prompted the nation's two principal indigenous confederationsthe Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and CONFENIAE-to demand a 15-year moratorium on new oil development...

...The deal guaranteed Texaco and its partners 93% of the profits with the remaining 7% going to the government...

...Kimerling documented 30 spills from breaks in the Texacobuilt trans-Ecuadorian pipeline...

...The Ecuadorian government also intervened on Texaco's behalf, protesting that the suit was a violation of the country's sovereignty...

...Texaco opened the door for other transnational companies...

...Manuel Navarro, the former director of Petroecuador's environmental unit, sees the problem as more serious...

...Indigenous women were forced into prostitution, and children suffered from diseases unknown before oil was found on their lands...

...On paper, the country has become more insistent that oil companies operating in Ecuador formulate plans to protect the environment...

...At the clearing's edge is a pool, about 20 yards in diameter, which contains oil the consistency of tar...

...The Canadian environmental consulting firm, HBT Agra, was hired to conduct the study, which was jointly funded by Petroecuador and Texaco...

...his May, Ecuador presided over a new round of oil licensing...

...This January, opposition leaders in the Ecuadorian Congress demanded and obtained the release of the HBT Agra study, which the government had until then shielded from public scrutiny...

...Ecuador's new Amazon oil concessions-awarded to U.S...

...The construction of a network of 300 miles of roads opened the Amazon to a wave of colonization, and led directly to the clearing of more than two million acres of rainforest...

...In practice, these regulations were never enforced...

...At the time Texaco entered Ecuador, there were no environmental laws regarding oil development, although Ecuador's Constitution guarantees the right "to live in an environment free from contamination...

...Two young women arrive with stewing chickens, which they clean in the polluted stream...

...The class-action suit, filed in November, 1993, seeks $1.5 billion in damages from Texaco to be invested in a clean-up of companycaused pollution...

...The campaign has r an abandoned Tex- succeeded in pegging Texaco as a symbol of the irresponsibility of transnational oil corporations...

...O Occidental, ARCO, Maxus Energy, Oryx, Elf-Aquitaine, and Braspetro have all become involved in recent years in the search for new oil fields in the Amazon...

...Several bear the logo of the departed giant of Ecuador's Amazon: "Texaco...

...They cite the fact that the study's reference levels for pollutants are far higher than public-health standards set by the U.S...

...A cap of oil is clearly visible on one such stream near Shushufindi...

...Gulf Oil participated as a passive investment partner in the Texaco consortium, but it was Texaco which operated the oil facilities, taking responsibility for both production and environmental controls in a concession area which grew to cover five million acres...

...For Ecuador, the arrival of Texaco provided an opportunity for the country to join the ranks of world oil producers...

...NACA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 6UPDATE / ECUADOR ing feat which pumped oil over the Andes Mountains to a refinery at the port of Esmeraldas in the northwestern part of the country...

...Subsequent regulations also mandated pollution-control measures and remedial clean-up of polluted facilities...

...The controversy over Texaco's environmental legacy in Ecuador was heightened by the release this March of an independent report by the New York-based Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) which found serious public-health threats from Texaco's pollution...

...For 20 years, Texaco dominated Ecuador's burgeoning oil industry...

...From the refinery's stacks, flames burning around the clock emit clouds of smoke, casting a hellish tinge over the town...

...Texaco's first well was drilled in Lago Agrio, site of a village of the Tetete people, an indigenous group that is now extinct...

...Attorney General Griffin Bell...

...This April, however, Judge Vincent Broderick ruled that he would agree to hear the case in New York if a search of Texaco's files can establish that decisions affecting management of Texaco's Ecuador operations were made in the company's U.S...

...Pressure against Texaco is helping to force the Ecuadorian government to change its attitude...

...Yet, enforcement of environmental regulations remains extremely lax...

...Later, with the enactment of the Hydrocarbons Law of 1971 and the signing of Texaco's production contract, the company was required in principle "to adopt appropriate measures for the protection of flora, fauna, and other natural resources, as well as to avoid contamination of waters, air, and the land...

...What is unique about the saga of Texaco in Ecuador is that the company may have to clean up the waste it abandoned in the rainforest...

...Crist6bal Bonifaz, a lawyer from a well-connected Ecuadorian family, joined with the Philadelphia law firm Kohn, Nast, and Graf to bring suit against the oil company in New York Federal Court...

...In 1972, Texaco signed a 20-year contract with the Ecuadorian government which gave the company a virtual monopoly over oil production...

...Texaco executives would be relieved to pay that amount, compared with the $1.5 billion requested by plaintiffs in the lawsuit...

...nomic well-being of its people, and actively encouraged resource development and colonization of the Amazon Basin...