Årtiers oliesvineri i Ecuadors artsrige regnskov ser ud til at ride Chevron som en mare – heller ikke i Argentina ser man i nåde til den amerikanske oliegigant, som mødes med nye milliard-krav om erstatning for miljøkatastrofen i bananlandet længere mod nord.
A judge has ordered 19 billion US dollar of assets (værdier) held by oil company Chevron to be frozen in Argentina over an environmental damages claim in Ecuador, lawyers in the case say, according to BBC online Thursday.
The Ecuadorean plaintiffs (sagsøgere) accuse Chevron of polluting land in the Amazon region for almost three decades.
Last year, an Ecuadorean court ordered Chevron to pay 19 billion dollar in damages. Since Chevron has few assets in Ecuador, the plaintiffs are trying to get the ruling enforced abroad.
The Ecuadorean court judgement originally ordered Chevron to pay 8,6 billion dollar in environmental damages, but that was more than doubled because the oil company did not apologise publicly.
The Ecuadorean plaintiffs say that Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, dumped toxic (giftige) materials in the Ecuadorean Amazon between 1964 and 1992.
Chevron says Texaco spent 40 million dollar cleaning up the area during the 1990s, and signed an agreement with Ecuador in 1998 absolving (fritage) it of any further responsibility.
Chevron has in the past said the original ruling against the company was a product of “bribery (bestikkelse) and fraud (svindel)”.
