{"id":429329,"date":"2010-03-15T08:26:01","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T12:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3198"},"modified":"2010-03-15T08:26:01","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T12:26:01","slug":"judge-oks-arbitration-for-chevron%e2%80%99s-ecuador-cleanup-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/429329","title":{"rendered":"Judge OKs arbitration for Chevron\u2019s Ecuador cleanup case"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Greenwire<\/a>: Chevron Corp. may pursue arbitration in The Hague to settle a decades-old case over contamination from the company’s former oil fields in Ecuador<\/a>, a federal judge in New York ruled yesterday.<\/p>\n

Ecuadorean plaintiffs are seeking $27 billion for environmental damage that took place between 1964 and 1990. Chevron has claimed that it is shielded from litigation by an agreement with the Ecuadorean government to clean up part of the contamination while leaving the rest to Petroecuador, the state-run oil company that purchased the wells.<\/p>\n

A trial is already under way in the Ecuadorean town of Lago Agrio, but Chevron has argued that political pressure and corruption are likely to yield an unjust decision that is unfavorable to the company.<\/p>\n

“Only the international arbitration panel can bring Ecuador to the table and compel Petroecuador to do the right thing and clean up its oil fields,” said R. Hewitt Pate, general counsel for Chevron. “With today’s decision, we are one step closer to making that a reality.”<\/p>\n

Attorneys for the plaintiffs have argued that the agreement prevented the government, not private citizens, from suing Chevron. Unable to participate in arbitration between Chevron and the Ecuadorean government, the plaintiffs will continue with their lawsuit in Ecuadorean court, said Steven Donziger, their New York-based attorney.<\/p>\n

“In the end of the day, a public court will decide the claims of the victims,” Donziger said. “If they receive a favorable judgment against Chevron, we expect to enforce it in countries where the company has assets” (David Baker, San Francisco Chronicle<\/em><\/a>, March 12). – GN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Share This<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greenwire: Chevron Corp. may pursue arbitration in The Hague to settle a decades-old case over contamination from the company’s former oil fields in Ecuador, a federal judge in New York ruled yesterday. Ecuadorean plaintiffs are seeking $27 billion for environmental damage that took place between 1964 and 1990. Chevron has claimed that it is shielded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4055,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}