Stacking the Deck Against Chevron in Ecuadoran Lawsuit
“For three years, Mr. Cabrera has concealed clear financial conflicts of interest that disqualify him from acting as an independent and objective evaluator of the evidence in the case,” said Hewitt Pate, Chevron vice president and general counsel, in a company news release. “While Mr. Cabrera’s financial interests alone are sufficient grounds for his report to be rejected, his intentional concealment of those interests further demonstrates that the entirety of his work lacks honesty, integrity, or credibility.”
Recently uncovered records from 2003 through 2008 reveal that Cabrera is co-founder, general manager, majority stockholder, and legal representative of an oilfield remediation company, Compañía Ambiental Minera-Petrolera S.A. (CAMPET), which is registered to perform oilfield remediation and other services for Petroecuador. Cabrera failed to disclose these business interests as required by law.
In the aforementioned report, Cabrera absolves Petroecuador of any responsibility or remediation obligations associated with past or present oil operations despite its majority ownership of the Petroecuador-Texaco Petroleum consortium, which operated until mid-1992, and Petroecuador’s sole ownership and operation of the former consortium fields for the past 18 years.
Disregarding Ecuadorian media reports and other evidence showing that Petroecuador has spilled millions of gallons of oil since taking over exclusive ownership and operations in 1992, Cabrera attributes pollution in the Amazon region of Ecuador to Texaco Petroleum exclusively.
Cabrera’s report says that Chevron, because it acquired Texaco Inc. in 2001, is solely liable for damages, citing grossly inflated remediation costs while ignoring Petroecuador’s role in oil operations and its well-documented poor environmental performance. Cabrera’s report also calls on Chevron to pay $375 million to update Petroecuador’s oilfield equipment, which Petroecuador has for decades failed to properly maintain or replace. These findings make no sense as a matter of Ecuadorian law or common sense, but are consistent with furthering Petroecuador’s interests, as well as Cabrera’s own.
After knowingly omitting to disclose his financial interest in CAMPET, as well as CAMPET’s status as a registered Petroecuador contractor, Cabrera affirmatively misrepresented in court filings that he did not have any impediment or conflict that would affect his performance as an “independent” court-appointed witness. Cabrera violated the law by accepting his appointment, which required an explicit acknowledgment of public duties as an impartial analyst — an acknowledgment Cabrera could not truthfully have made given his financial interests.
Chevron previously challenged Cabrera’s lack of qualifications as well as the biased and baseless substance of his report. But Judge Juan Nuñez, who subsequently was disqualified for his involvement in a scheme to solicit bribes, inexplicably ignored those challenges, thus shielding Cabrera’s work from scrutiny. Now that Cabrera’s clear conflicts of interest are revealed, Chevron has demanded that the court strike his entire involvement in the case. Chevron’s Pate:
Mr. Cabrera has placed his own financial interests, as well as the interests of Petroecuador and the Amazon Defense Coalition, ahead of the interest of justice. … Today’s disclosure further illustrates the illegitimacy of Mr. Cabrera’s fictitious $27 billion recommendation. Taken into account with Mr. Cabrera’s collusion with the plaintiffs’ lawyers and representatives, it is clear that his report should have no bearing in the outcome of this trial.
To gain a better appreciation of the incestuous relationship between parties involved in this bogus lawsuit, I suggest you take a look at the “Web of Influence” published on Chevron’s The Amazon Post blog.
Full of interactive graphics, it offers telling snapshots of the tangled web that connects the ADC, a deep-pocketed Philadelphia law firm, a hungry New York lawyer, an infamous lobbyist, a scorched-truth-policy PR campaign, crooked Ecuadoran government officials, and others in an effort to extract as much as $27 billion from Chevron via what can best be described as distorted jungle justice.
(I’ve written about 30 posts about the Chevron-Ecuador lawsuit during the past nine months. To read the half-dozen that mentioned Cabrera, click here.)
Crude Oil are local action polarization of north and south pole of earth crust,which the magnetisation of hydrosphere effects the dust and sands in lithospher and the liquid substance that occurs on beneath the atmosphere is called petroluem ,which are like local actions in D.C battery either circuit when weakened by A.C current that drips a substance which alkaline in nature and an acidic ahydrocarbonated water on +/- charges on ions in cathode and anode cover of the battery which is like oil and gas well platform that is extractive while it drips and minned with exploration gadgets in automotive and machine systems.Such principle battery undergo as local action occurs on earth structured to form and build which can increase efficiency of animal life when multiplicity of hydrocaborn are minned and used as source of fuel.
The equal activities performed with D.C battery interface to A.C current is content of the hydrocarbonated base,acidic or alkaline liquid that drips on it when local action polarises occures which is the same in oil and gas fields in onshore or offshore extration of crudes in petroluem industry.
“BIAMOS” all your Igbo language translators knows it is existing and NIgeria security agencies means and is acronym of Biafra Mobile service,which is a telecommunication firm called BIAMOS “BIAFRA MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES”.
Nzewi says What?
The most shocking part on this case i read last year was the pictures they provided that claimed damage were on wells owned by Petro Ecuador and not even Old Texaco properties. That is like going to court for your neighbors car wreck.
The lawsuit against Chevron is a grand shakedown. Contrary to popular misinformation, oil is not the great polluter it has been made out to be. Roads are paved with it. People grease their hair with it and they even put it on their babies’ behinds. Oil is bio-degradable. Fly over the Ecuadorian jungle and one will see that it is as green as ever. Whatever oil Texaco spilled there has long since been consumed by the organisms that live there. Mr. Cabrera should be regarded the same as those charlatans who were and are promoting the fraud of global warming.
It was Texaco and Corrupt Government officials that caused this damage from mid 1960′s until the 90′s. There are various recorded spills, pipe bursts, and basic dumping of chemical waste into large pits and then covered with soil. This is without contention.
Petroleum in its natural state is not a polluter, obviously it comes from the ground and goes back in. The problem is when Petroleum is processed, man made chemicals used in the processing are not natural so its disingenuous to state (man made) chemical spills are absorbed by Nature. If that was the case we would not have environmental damage of any type.
Chevron merged with Texaco knowing its liabilities and debts, and the lawsuit was already in Motion. There are about a dozen Chevron Bloggers writing in an organized public relations move, which is good short term strategy but will fail in the long run.
These stories written by bloggers only bring more research into what actually occurred, and who is at fault. The best long term strategy is for Chevron to complete Due Diligence on its mergers and acquisitions beforehand, If a company has these types of lawsuits to firewall the lawsuit away from the parent company. This is a good example of extremely poor legal work on Chevrons part in merging with Texaco.
The only long term solution is to clean up the mess left behind. Maybe the lawyers that Ok’d the merger could put some work clothes on, get out to ecuador and find out there is no substitute for hands on research.
Corrupt government extortion. Pure and simple. Chevron’s only mistake is to be worth more than Ecuador. Next subject.
Alex,
The law suit is for the cleanup of raw petroleum in an oil field.
The Ecuadorian oil company wants Chevron to clean up Petroecuador’s oil spills and the government of Ecuador wants more money.
Alex,
Texaco did have a small refinery in Lago Agrio to produce gasoline, jet fuel and diesel to run the equipment, vehicles, and electric generators, but it didn’t manufacture chemicals.
Big oil has gotten a lot of undeserved bad press, but they are good corporations. They provide us with gasoline for our cars and that is good. They also pay good dividends to their shareholders.
That you see them as villains and a greedy grifter like Richard Cabrera as a hero makes you seem to be lacking of reason.
If you have a refinery, then your using man made chemicals to aid in the processing of petroleum, if you don’t understand how petroleum processing works, but there is plenty of information available pretty much everywhere.
Chevron bloggers; they have their agenda, who cares.They are not lawyers or have experience with petroleum processing, they are part of a public relations campaign, more power to them, fight the good fight. In the end Chevron will settle out of court, or simply not pay the awarded amount.
The fact is this case was argued to be held in Ecuador, AFTER A NEW YORK JUDGE DISMISSED THE LAWSUIT, Texaco won, and then took it right back into Ecuador, stupid move. Chevron should have investigated this merger with much more diligence and firewalled this lawsuit. It was bonehead move by Chevron Lawyers, this is my main point.
Patrick of Atlantis; dont make assumptions, they make an donkey out of those that do. Could care less about richard cabrera. We manufactured components for the Oil industry for several decades, I know far more than you about petroleum processing and petroleum companies and what they are capable of, where they cut corners, and people that lost their lives because they wont spring for maintenance parts until failure. There are many dirty little secrets in every industry, Oil has theirs. its like any other large business driven by profit. No better, No worse.
Chevron made huge mistake not understanding how a lawsuit in the middle of jungle in small country can spiral into a public relations nightmare. Their legal department performed terribly, did not utilize good judgement and the company as a whole is paying the price for a few overpaid legal guns thoughtlessness.