ChevronToxico

November 12, 2005 12:55 PM

From 1964 to 1992, Texaco(.mov, 20.6MB) drilled for oil in the northern region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, known as the "Oriente". The company left 627 open toxic waste pits and other facilities which continue to leak highly toxic waste, affecting more than 30,000 local people. A higher incidence of birth defects, cancer, miscarriages, skin diseases, and death continues to plague people whose only source of water is a contaminated river. ChevronTexaco refuses to remediate the damage, claiming that they already "cleaned up" their share of the contract, by shoveling 3 feet of dirt over some of the open oil pits.
posted by mayfly wake (15 comments total)

So what's the "subliminal" superimposing of the ChevronTexaco log on the fire at the end of the movie...It's just a split second, with the logo flashing vertically on the fire.
posted by duck at 1:23 PM on November 12, 2005

Clearly these are just the kind of people that should be trusted to handle drilling in ANWR!
posted by clevershark at 1:39 PM on November 12, 2005

And I thought Texaco's dropping sponsorship of radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera was bad.
posted by Cranberry at 1:51 PM on November 12, 2005

more reason to avoid using my car.
posted by j-urb at 3:11 PM on November 12, 2005

I suppose it would be too crazy to add real cleanup provisions into any oil contracts on ANWR, wouldn't it.
posted by Balisong at 3:52 PM on November 12, 2005

John Perkins talks about the rape of Ecuador's natural resources by multinational corporations (such as Shell) in his Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
posted by Rothko at 4:10 PM on November 12, 2005

Balisong writes "I suppose it would be too crazy to add real cleanup provisions into any oil contracts on ANWR, wouldn't it."

I think the point is that no matter what the provisions are they wouldn't abide by them.
posted by clevershark at 4:21 PM on November 12, 2005

Bush lost millions for investors in his startup awl bidness ventures in the Ree-Public o' Texas. Maybe they won't find any oil to spill up there.
posted by longsleeves at 7:02 PM on November 12, 2005

California has had a big impact on Ecuador: State of Denial: Tropics suffer to satisfy state's oil demand.
posted by homunculus at 12:19 AM on November 13, 2005

Good timing.

Jump a continent to your right, please, let's talk about Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Author, Writer, Activist, and hanged man.

A huge talent, an author, an actor, an Ogoni tribesman, a Nigerian star, and someone who advocated against what Royal Dutch Shell had done to the Nigerian Delta. A number of their scarred, abandoned sites, or pits, would spontaneously ignite, or leech into the river.

He was first an Ogoni. And probably because his father was also a tribal leader, he did follow (read any number of accounts on the web).

And 10 years and two days ago, he and eight other Ogonis were hanged.
posted by toma at 3:04 AM on November 13, 2005

Here, here, here.
posted by toma at 3:27 AM on November 13, 2005

And underscores for dashes, sorry Here
posted by toma at 3:35 AM on November 13, 2005

And wikipedia is dumber than dirt, if you lower-case Saro or Wiwa it fails. I've got better things to do, heere.
posted by toma at 3:52 AM on November 13, 2005

Maybe ChevronTexaco can't afford to clean it up.
posted by SteveTheRed at 10:24 AM on November 13, 2005

Oil companies can't afford the luxury of doing the right thing environmentally or otherwise.
They are just barely eking out a profit these days.
God's gonna destroy everything soon anyway (so saith LaHaye) so why care?
Jeez, you bunch of whiny tree hugging lieberals
:-)
posted by nofundy at 10:28 AM on November 13, 2005