Chevron’s Lobbying Effort Blasted in Politico Monday

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29560.html

Chevron's lobby campaign backfires
By: Kenneth P. Vogel
November 16, 2009 04:58 AM EST

Facing the possibility of a $27 billion pollution judgment against it in an Ecuadorean court, Chevron launched an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign to try to prevent the judgment as well as reverse a deeply damaging story line.

Chevron's tactics — ranging from quietly trying to wield U.S. trade policy to compel Ecuador's government to squelch the case, to producing a pseudo-news report casting the company as the victim of a corrupt Ecuadorean political system — were designed to win powerful allies in Congress and the Obama administration as well as to shape public opinion and calm shareholders.

But many of the company's moves have backfired, drawing fire from environmentalists, media ethicists, state pension funds, New York's attorney general, members of Congress and even Barack Obama when he was a senator.

"Their lobbying and PR efforts are really clumsy and very heavy handed, and I think that that's why they're experiencing a degree of backlash," said Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), who is circulating the first of what she promises will be three letters to colleagues blasting what she calls the company's "misguided approach" to dealing with the case.

The case stems from a class action suit brought by well-connected U.S. trial lawyers on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadoreans alleging that from 1964 to 1990, Texaco — which was purchased by Chevron in 2001 — dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into Ecuador's Amazon rain forest, leaving behind an unprecedented environmental and public health disaster including a wave of cancers, birth defects and miscarriages.

Chevron has been pushing the U.S. government to revise Ecuador's trade preferences since soon after the lawsuit was filed in Ecuador in 2003 (it originally had been in U.S. federal court in 1993). But with a years-long trial in a tiny courtroom in the Ecuadorean rain forest expected to culminate in a ruling early next year, Chevron has turned up the heat, arguing that it can't get a fair trial in Ecuador, an assertion that Sanchez and other Chevron critics point out seems to conflict with the company's previous efforts to move the trial from U.S. courts to Ecuador.

In part, Chevron wants the office of U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, as well as Congress, to revoke the preferential treatment Ecuador gets for its oil exports under the 1991 Andean Trade Preferences Act, unless the country enforces an agreement it entered into with Texaco in the mid-1990s, under which the company paid for a three-year, $40 million cleanup and was relieved of liability. The plaintiffs contend that Chevron botched the cleanup, but if the court were to recognize the agreement, it could essentially end the suit.

"When a government is in violation of its contractual obligations to a company, there are only a few avenues a company has to seek resolution," Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson said in explaining his firm's lobbying over the trade preferences. "If we were able to call a timeout and make the lawsuit disappear, then this entire issue disappears," he added.

Chevron says its lobbying campaign — which has included more than $1.6 million in fees this year to a bipartisan roster of Washington heavyweights including Democrats Mickey Kantor, a former U.S. trade representative; Mack McLarty, a former White House chief of staff; and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.); as well as big-time GOP bundler Wayne Berman — is not at all unusual.

Advocates for the plaintiffs, whose suit is financed by a Philadelphia law firm, have rallied their own impressive response in Washington. Led by Steven Donziger, a New York-based lawyer who was a Harvard Law School classmate of Obama, it includes Democratic fundraiser and lobbyist Ben Barnes; Tom Downey, a former Democratic congressman who is married to Obama climate czar Carol Browner and who recently registered to lobby Congress for Donziger; and public relations consultant Karen Hinton. The team has helped persuade a number of influential members of Congress to sign on to letters urging Kirk to reject Chevron's efforts.

In 2006, after multiple visits from Donziger, then-Sen. Obama joined with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) in signing a letter to then-U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, asking him "not to interfere in the Chevron case" and asserting that the Ecuadoreans "deserve their day in court."

Robertson rejected the suggestion that the company's lobbying had backfired, pointing to a report Obama transmitted to Congress this summer that allowed the preferences to continue but referenced Chevron's concerns about the trial, including the company's allegations of interference by Ecuadorean officials up to and including President Rafael Correa.

In an interview, Sanchez, who will testify Tuesday at a hearing her House Ways and Means subcommittee is scheduled to hold on free trade agreements, said Chevron is "trying to leverage our trade policy in order to get a lawsuit dismissed that is currently pending before the Ecuadorean court. It is a way of trying to undermine the rule of law, and I just find that completely abhorrent. It's shocking."

This summer, Chevron thought it had made major progress toward proving its point that it could not receive a fair trial in Ecuador, when it revealed that it had obtained videos — purportedly taped secretly by a pair of whistleblowers using recorders implanted in watches and pens — that the company said exposed a bribery scheme in the case involving Ecuadorean officials and possibly the judge in the case. The company turned the recordings over to authorities in the U.S. and Ecuador and circulated excerpts of the recordings on Capitol Hill. The judge recused himself.

But late last month, Hinton — who is paid by the Philadelphia law firm financing the suit to advocate on behalf of a nonprofit called the Amazon Defense Coalition — released a report revealing that the American who helped make the recordings was a convicted drug trafficker, while his Ecuadorean partner was a Chevron contractor.

Robertson called the report "character assignation" and said it "doesn't change what was caught on film. We have a judge who is corrupt. … We're not measuring the release of the videos as success or failure."

He did count as a success, though, the fact that Chevron shareholders in May, after a letter-writing campaign by the company, voted down a resolution citing the lawsuit and calling on the company to examine whether it complies with host country laws and environmental regulations.

Nonetheless, state pension funds that hold a combined $1 billion in Chevron shares have expressed concern about how the company plans to handle a potentially huge adverse judgment in the case. And in a May letter demanding more information from Chevron, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said he had recently "received complaints regarding Chevron's disclosures of the potential litigation risks and Chevron's characterization of available legal defenses."

Chevron also got dinged for a curious PR effort back in April, when — after catching wind that CBS's "60 Minutes" was preparing a damaging report about its handling of the Ecuador case — it released a video it paid for featuring former CNN reporter Gene Randall delivering what looked like a news report giving Chevron's side of the story.

Posted on YouTube and the company's website and bearing the logo "Gene Randall reporting," the report was produced with help from the conservative Beltway consulting firm CRC Public Relations. It cast Ecuador's politicians as out to get Chevron and blamed the pollution on Ecuador's state-owned oil company, which took over Texaco's operations.

Columbia Journalism Review assailed the report as "deceptive" and posited that it "might be unprecedented for how it blurred the line between public relations and journalism."

Chevron's Robertson said Hinton and the lawyers in the case are "trying to take Chevron's reputation hostage and to ransom it back to us" for a settlement. "So getting our side of the story out there is important."

Robertson also said Hinton and her allies are in a bit of a "glass houses situation" when it comes to alleging sneaky techniques. He pointed out that Hinton's group paid a private investigator to expose the background of the video maker, that a group linked to Hinton's issued press releases insinuating that the murder of a brother of one of the plaintiff's lawyers may be linked to the case (though the lawyer initially told the police otherwise) and that Hinton's own husband, Howard Glaser, a financial services industry analyst, late last month posted an item bashing Chevron on The Huffington Post — to which he is a contributor — without noting their marriage.

Hinton asserted her side's tactics have been above board, adding that, though "no one knows who murdered [the lawyer's] brother," the killing came at a time when the lawyer "and other members of the plaintiffs' legal team had received a number of anonymous death threats connected to the work on the case."

Meanwhile, even the addendum Hinton's husband posted at the request of Chevron noting his wife's relationship to the case somehow seemed to ricochet against Chevron.

"My spouse works with the indigenous people of Ecuador who are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Chevron for the massive pollution the company left behind in the rain forest," he wrote. "While Chevron conducts a multimillion-dollar media spin campaign to paint themselves as the environmental 'good guys,' said spouse working out of her house with her two cats and cell phone appears to have gotten under Chevron's corporate skin."

Chevron’s Ready-Made Scandal Continues to Fall Apart

New post from Paul over at ChevroninEcuador.com:

Chevron's Ready-Made Scandal Continues to Fall Apart

A new Associated Press investigation revealed that the purported environmental remediation specialist, Wayne Douglas Hansen, who secretly filmed meetings meant to catch Ecuadorian officials in acts of corruption has never owned a remediation company—as claimed—nor does he have any relationship with Honeywell Inc. as claimed in one of the videos.

AP reporters interviewed Hansen on the phone earlier this month. When they asked him the name of his company, he refused to answer. He instead described water treatment projects he is working on in Mexico and Ecuador. When the reporters questioned him about details of these projects, he hung up.

The AP investigation also uncovered Hansen's repeated run-ins with the law, ranging from letting his pit bull go wild on a neighbor's dog, to conspiring to smuggle 275,000 pounds of marijuana from Colombia into the United States! (He was convicted and served time in federal prison.)

The investigation shatters Chevron's attempt to portray Hansen as a sincere, concerned citizen who hand delivered the supposed bribery videos out of a sense of civic duty.

A parallel plaintiffs' report on Hansen was also published today, going into exhaustive detail on the information recently uncovered.

What remains to be uncovered is: one, the extent to which Hansen's involvement in the video scandal constitutes a federal crime for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and two, whether Chevron knowingly participated with Hansen in illegal activity to get their hands on a "smoking gun."

– Paul

Chevron’s “Good Samaritan” is a Drug Trafficker and a liar…

An article in the New York Times today outlines the latest findings about the American, Wayne Hansen, who supposedly owned a remediation company, and who Chevron claimed made secret videotapes to expose "corruption" out of the goodness of his heart. Well, turns out that almost everything the guy said about who he was and who Chevron claimed he was is a lie – he does not own a remediation company, he has never done any remediation, and he is a convicted felon (For trying to smuggle 275,000
pounds of drugs).

And this brings up a serious question: if the guy isn't who Chevron says he is, and if he wasn't actually looking for remediation contracts (since he didn't have a remediation business), what was he doing in meetings, asking leading questions, while he secretly videotapes it? Why was he in that room? More and more signs are point towards Chevron, the only party that benefited from Hansen's attempt to undermine the trial in Ecuador.

Read on, from the Times:

October 30, 2009

Revelation Undermines Chevron Case in Ecuador

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

HOUSTON — An American whose secret recordings have placed him at the center of a $27 billion lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador is a convicted drug trafficker, records show, throwing another complication into a case already tainted by accusations of bribery and espionage.

The lawsuit pits Ecuadorean peasants against Chevron over oil pollution in the Amazon and has been a major headache for the company for nearly a decade, producing a saga that underscores many of the hazards and ethical challenges of oil companies working in the developing world.

The company appeared to gain the upper hand in August when it revealed video recordings — captured on watches and pens implanted with bugging devices — that suggested a bribery scheme involving Ecuadorean officials, and possibly even the judge hearing the case.

But the company was put on the defensive again on Thursday, after lawyers for the peasants revealed that one of two men who made the tapes was a convicted felon. Court and other records provided by the plaintiffs show that Wayne Hansen, the American who helped make the recordings, was convicted of conspiring to traffic 275,000 pounds of marijuana from Colombia to the United States in 1986. He also was sued successfully in 2005 by a woman who accused him of unleashing his two pit bulls to attack her and her dog.

The disclosure adds more questions about what motivated Mr. Hansen and an Ecuadorean partner to record meetings for Chevron's use, which the company has characterized as an act of whistle-blowing by men offended by unethical behavior and evidence that the handling of the case had been flawed.

"It's another blockbuster development in a case that never runs short of them," said Ralph G. Steinhardt, a professor at George Washington University Law School. "It doesn't necessarily mean there was no bribery plan, but anything that undermines the credibility of the witness undermines the case of the party that would call that witness."

Trevor Melby, Mr. Hansen's lawyer, did not deny his client had a criminal history, saying, "The thing about felony convictions is they follow you to the grave, but even if he had 15 felony convictions it wouldn't change the tapes." Mr. Melby said he was not being paid by Chevron.

The origins of the case go back to the 1970s, when Texaco operated in partnership with the Ecuadorean state oil company to produce oil in the Amazon. Peasants filed suit in 1993, saying that the company, which had ceased to operate in Ecuador by then, had left an environmental mess that had caused illnesses among villagers. Chevron bought Texaco before the case could be resolved.

Chevron has long said that it could not receive a fair hearing in Ecuador before a hostile judge and government. That argument seemed to be reinforced by the recordings obtained by Mr. Hansen and an Ecuadorean man who had worked as a contractor for the company. They showed an Ecuadorean political go-between working to obtain $3 million in bribes for environmental cleanup contracts to be awarded after the case ended.

But it remained unclear why Mr. Hansen was involved in the discussions. The plaintiffs said that an inquiry into his background by a private investigator found that Mr. Hansen did not hold an engineering license, never finished college and showed no record of being qualified to remediate pollution as he portrayed to Ecuadorean officials in the tapes.

Chevron has said it had no involvement in the videotaping, and company spokesmen have said Mr. Hansen was never their point of contact. "We've had no association with this guy," said Donald Campbell, a Chevron spokesman. "This issue is the content on the video and the transcripts that we turned over to the prosecutor general of Ecuador and the U.S. Department of Justice, which shows inappropriate meetings by the judge in our case, extensive government interference in the trial and a bribe plot involving $3 million."

The other man involved in making the recordings, Diego Borja, has since been moved to the United States with his family at Chevron's expense, and he has been receiving an undisclosed amount of living expenses.

No bribes were shown in the tapes, but the plot supposedly included Judge Juan Núñez, who was presiding in the case. Mr. Núñez recused himself, though he says he did nothing wrong.

Chevron Sullying Reputation of American Corporations Abroad; Garrigo Sullying Chevron’s Reputation at Home

Chevron's spokeswoman and resident "Misrepresenter in Chief" Silvia Garrigo was at it again during an interview with CNN's Rick Sanchez on Oct. 22. Garrigo, who professes to love the environment, last made headlines with her abysmal performance on CBS News' 60 minutes, where she dismissed health concerns in Ecuador's Amazon by comparing cancer-causing toxins in oil to the makeup on her face. This was Garrigo's classic line:

"I have makeup on, and there's naturally occurring oil on my face. Doesn't mean that I'm going to get sick from it."

The experts who run Chevron's embattled public affairs office either have very few options, or they apparently thought Garrigo's comparison of contamination to makeup was solid enough to put her on CNN. Garrigo was responding to Kerry Kennedy's account of her heartbreaking visit to the Ecuadorian rainforest where Texaco (now Chevron) intentionally dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste and abandoned over 900 unlined waste pits while operating a large oil concession from 1964 to 1990.

Kennedy, a mother of three and a longtime human rights advocate, described in detail the devastation she witnessed as a result of improper operating practices by Texaco (now Chevron). She told of the gasoline-like smell coming from the runoff from pipes intentionally designed by Texaco to discharge oil sludge and waste water from the pits directly into the rivers and streams used by the indigenous communities in the area for drinking, bathing, and cooking. She also recounted stories from the indigenous communities of rape and abuse at the hands of Texaco employees. This would not have occurred, she argued, if the residents were living in this country.

In response, Garrigo chided Kennedy for spending only a few days in the region -- as if it takes more than a few minutes to understand that huge open pits of oil, left untouched since Texaco abandoned them many years ago, are a mess that needs to be cleaned up. (Kennedy's trip is a few days more than any member of Chevron's management or Board of Directors has spent in Ecuador. No person with any real authority at the company – including outgoing CEO David O'Reilly, incoming CEO John Watson, outgoing General Counsel Charles James, and new General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate -- has been to the affected region of Ecuador.)

Garrigo then presented three arguments that she desperately wanted to share with the American public: 1) That Texaco had remediated its portion of the contamination and that what Kennedy saw was now the responsibility of Ecuador's government; 2) The cancer claims are false (Garrigo's apparent personal favorite); and 3) The Ecuadorian judiciary is corrupt.

All three arguments, not surprisingly, are either misleading or outright lies. The facts are as follows:

Garrigo: Any contamination Kennedy witnessed was caused by Petroecuador, Ecuador's state-owned oil company that inherited Texaco's well sites in 1992 when Texaco left the country.

Fact: Contrary to Garrigo's claim, Kennedy visited well sites built and run exclusively by Texaco. Aguarico 2 was solely operated by Texaco from 1974 to 1990 and then closed. This site was never operated by any other oil company. Kennedy dug mere inches into the ground before discovering oil in the soil, which is leaching into groundwater and ending up in the nearby stream where local residents drink the water. Kennedy saw the same contamination at Shushufindi 38, a pit opened by Texaco in 1975 and closed by Texaco in 1976. She also saw well site Aguarico 4, which was operated by Texaco from 1974 to 1984. In other words, Kennedy saw unlined waste pits built and closed by Texaco in the 1970s and 1980s that are still causing pollution today.

Texaco's so-called "remediation" cited by Garrigo involved fewer than 16% of the 916 pits that Texaco built. The remediation has been proven at trial to be either ineffective, or a complete fraud. Independent inspections of Texaco's "remediated" sites have found extensive levels of contamination, often thousands of times higher than the Ecuadorian norms that establish when human health is at risk. In fact, two Chevron lawyers and seven former Ecuadorian government officials are now under indictment for fraud connected to their involvment in the certification of the "remediated" pits. One of the Chevron lawyers under criminal indictment, Ricardo Reis Veiga, is thought of so highly by the company that he is still running Chevron's downstream operations in Latin America. (Reis Veiga also supervised Garrigo for several years on the Ecuador trial out of Chevron's office in Coral Gables.)

Garrigo: Any claims about health impacts in Ecuador from exposure to oil contamination are false.

Fact: It is well-established that exposure to any number of the chemicals and compounds that makeup oil is linked to higher instances of cancer – and numerous, peer-reviewed studies show elevated instances of cancer in the region of Ecuador which Texaco contaminated.

Is there anyone outside of Chevron who seriously believes there is no connection between consuming water and foods contaminated with oil and cancer? The independent, peer-reviewed studies measuring the impact of contamination on the health of people living in the Chevron concession area have found that cancer rates were anywhere from 1.7 to 4 times greater than for people living outside the area. One study found that the risk for spontaneous abortion was 2.34 times higher among woman living near the contamination. Based on survey data, the court Special Master calculated 1,401 excess cancer deaths resulting from the contamination. (Texaco, in the 26 years that it operated in Ecuador, never conducted a single health evaluation in the region nor took even one soil or water sample to determine if its operations were causing contamination.)

Garrigo: The courts in Ecuador are "corrupt to their core":

Fact: As Kennedy noted in her interview, the plaintiffs originally filed the lawsuit in New York Federal Court in 1993. Texaco and then Chevron fought to have the case removed to Ecuador arguing in 14 affidavits that the Ecuadorian judiciary was not only the more appropriate forum, but that the judicial system was competent and fair. Chevron won that battle, and the same case was re-filed in Ecuador in 2003. Once the trial started and evidence pointed to Chevron's culpability, Chevron changed its tune and started to attack the very courts it previously had praised. The animating principle: praise courts when you think you can win, condemn them when you think you are going to lose. But as Garrigo said on 60 Minutes when she got cornered by correspondent Scott Pelley, the reality is there is no court in the world that Chevron would agree to because Chevron is above the law and the claims relating to the pits Kennedy saw are "frivolous".

In reality, Chevron has tried to corrupt the Ecuadorian court process to derail the trial and evade a judgment – which explains why Chevron is under three separate official investigations for possible criminal violations relating to its misconduct in Ecuador. It also why Ecuador's Attorney General has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the company for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Garrigo asks about corruption? She should just walk down the hall. Garrigo's colleagues at Chevron have fabricated a false military report to cancel the Guanta judicial field inspection, have filed redundant motions to delay the trial, have threatened various judges when they refuse to rule in the company's favor, and have harassed and stalked the court-appointed Special Master to the point where he needed police protection. Just weeks ago Chevron discovered a "bribery scandal" that has all the telltale signs of a hoax perpetrated by the company to sabotage the trial. That doesn't count the numerous and anonymous death threats leveled at plaintiff's counsel during the trial – threats that don't seem of great concern to Chevron, which has remained silent on this most critical of issues.

At the end of the interview, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez asked Garrigo if contamination of the sort left by American corporations is "sullying our reputation in the world." She said she couldn't agree more but Chevron has always acted appropriately.

Chevron has always acted appropriately? From Ecuador (largest oil-related contamination on the planet), to Burma (where Chevron is partners with the repressive military junta), to the Philippines (where Chevron has caused spills, leaks, and fires in a residential area because of its oil depot), to Nigeria (where the company is accused of being complicit in an army-orchestrated killing of protesting villagers), at least some people on the receiving end of Chevron's misconduct would probably disagree with Chevron's Manager of Global Issues and Policy.

By its handling of the Ecuador case, it appears that Chevron not only doesn't mind sullying America's reputation. It also doesn't seem too concerned about its own reputation, either.

Chevron hit hard today by movie review in Washington Post

Interesting review of the movie "Crude" in today's Washington Post – the article really breaks down the way Chevron has handled the lawsuit to date. Take a look below or at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/22/AR2009102201443_pf.html

Not simply an underdog's tale

By John Anderson
Friday, October 23, 2009

Had Michael Moore wanted to make a serious movie about capitalism, he would have made "Crude." Joe Berlinger's scorched-earth documentary and David-and-Goliath drama offers more than a few eco-outraged observations on the not-so-free enterprise system: As the film very eloquently implies, when the greater good is defined as profits, and a lack of culpability is proportionate to your number of shareholders, well . . . a lot of petroleum-soaked chickens will be coming home to roost.

For three years, Berlinger followed the now-17-year-old lawsuit against Chevron filed by 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorans, and the results are an eco-war strategy as might have been devised by Sun Tzu. Witnesses are prepped, strategies are rehearsed, judges are buttonholed and celebrities are stroked -- and this is the strategy of the "good guys," as they probably would be defined by Berlinger. While both sides in the case certainly are given their voice, it's unlikely that the director -- who enjoys a lucrative commercial career in New York -- would have been inspired to leave hearth and home by his deep sense of injustice over the sufferings of Chevron.

And yet, "Crude" is that rare thing in fiction or nonfiction cinema, a movie that relies on its audience to draw the right conclusions. Chevron makes a decent case for itself: It wasn't even in the Amazon from 1972 to 1990, when an alleged 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater were dumped there, sickening the inhabitants (notably the plaintiff Cofán tribe). But Texaco was, and Chevron took it over in 2001. And while much blame is assigned by all parties to the government-owned PetroEcuador, which has run the country's oil production since the early '90s, all the experts brought in to make assessments conclude that the damage is deep and old.

Chevron's motives are clear -- although the pending judgment against it is "only" $27 billion, it hardly pays to set a precedent and settle. When Pablo Fajardo, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, and his associate Luis Yanza receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2008, a Chevron spokesman is heard calling them liars. Lawyers for the Ecuadorans admit that a Chevron defeat could mean big fees. When we see Chevron's agents -- such as counsel Ricardo Reis Veiga, who has since been indicted for fraud -- they admit nothing.

Berlinger ("Brother's Keeper," "Paradise Lost") lets it play out artfully. The fact that Chevron's representatives come across as soulless shills is hardly his fault; he lets them present their case without comment. It's hardly his responsibility to make someone such as corporation scientist Sara McMillan appear less reptilian when she contends that there's been no damage to the jungle, no oil-related illness, no correlation between pollution and death. From what the viewer can tell, Chevron is a little like the guy who performed a little surgery and stole your kidneys: What kidneys? Prove you ever had kidneys! If the movie is any indication, Chevron would have the public believe there was no Amazon at all -- something people might be willing to believe, were Berlinger not sticking "Crude" in their faces.

Anderson is a freelance reviewer.

*** ½ Unrated. At Landmark's E Street Cinema. Contains disturbing content. 105 minutes.

Whew. 3.5 stars (out of 4) for a film that Chevron and its shills keep trying to attack as just an anti-Chevron film. Maybe they try and go after the film because the company's arguments ring hollow - so rather than deal with the reality on the ground, the company encourages sympathetic bloggers like Carter Wood to attack the film. And therein lies Chevron's entire strategy (and the root of the company's problems): treat the situation in Ecuador as an image problem to be managed, rather than a humanitarian and economic crisis to be solved.

Hopefully the film will start to wake the company up to the reality: they made a mess in Ecudor, and they now need to clean it up.

Chevron has problems all around the world…

This press release from FACES, a group which tracks environmental justice issues in the Philippines and the United States:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 22, 2009
3:30 PM

CONTACT: Filipino/American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (FACES)
Aileen Suzara, FACES
510-409-8627, info@facessolidarity.org

US State Department Gets It Wrong on Chevron's Operations in the Philippines
SAN FRANCISCO - October 22 - Chevron Corporation's recent nomination to the State Department's annual Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE) for its Philippine-based operations was met with opposition from US and Philippine environmentalists. In response to the nomination, FACES sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging the State Department to rescind the nomination.

"Communities are suffering from Chevron's toxic emissions, catastrophic spills, leakages, and the risk of fires and explosions," said Mari Rose Taruc, FACES Chevron Campaign Coordinator. "Nomination to the ACE award ignores Chevron's negative impacts on the health of communities in the Philippines and around the world where they operate."

FACES open letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted Chevron's toxic operations in the Philippines. "Chevron Philippines is no corporation to be proud of, not by the US or the Philippines. A little corporate donation to a local project does not replace the many lives lost or harmed due to their toxic operations in the fenceline communities of the Manila oil depots, as well as around the world where they operate," said the letter.

Philippine civil society and environmental groups have campaigned for years for the relocation of the massive Chevron oil depot out of Pandacan, a residential district in Metro Manila. An estimated 83,000 residents are directly impacted by the depot. Accidental spills, leakages and fires have overwhelmed the community over the years. A study conducted by Global Community Monitor in 2002 detected high levels of benzene, a known carcinogen and component of gasoline, in the air around Pandacan.

Yet despite opposition from the community and Church leaders, public health concerns, numerous ordinances, and a 2007 Supreme Court decision that ordered Chevron to relocate their depot for the "protection of the residents of Manila from catastrophic devastation," Chevron has continued to stall out this order.

"We are asking for relocation of the depot to an area with a proper buffer zone, away from the nearest communities. This is a holocaust waiting to happen," said leaders of Advocates for Environmental and Social Justice (AESJ). AESJ is among the Manila-based groups currently leading a campaign to relocate the depot.

For more information on Chevron's impacts in the Philippines and worldwide, download the True Cost of Chevron Alternate Report: www.truecostofchevron.com and visit www.facessolidarity.org.

###
FACES is an intergenerational organization that works for environmental justice within communities in the United States and in the Philippines, and builds partnerships through advocacy, education, service, and organizing.

Today’s Bribery Tale Very Different from the One Chevron Told Seven Weeks Ago…

The tale that Chevron told about how two men secretly recorded a bribery scheme in Ecuador is a very different tale today from the one Chevron unveiled seven weeks ago on YouTube and through the news media. Chevron's attempt to use the bribery scheme to derail a potential $27 billion lawsuit for oil contamination in the Ecuadorian rainforest could turn out to be as big of a corporate scandal as the pretexting debacle at Hewlett Packard.

Below is a quick comparison of Chevron's original version of the story and what we know today. For more information, take a look at this complete list of Chevron's unanswered questions about the purported bribery scandal, and this compilation of media reports about the purported bribery scandal.

What Chevron Said Seven Weeks Ago:

• Patricio Garcia is a government party official who met at the party's headquarters office in Quito with Borja and Hansen
  

  
  

• Diego Borja is [only] a former Chevron logistics contractor
  

  
  

• Wayne Hansen, is an American business man who was looking for remediation work in Ecuador.
  

  
  

• Borja and Hansen have not received any payment for secretly taping Garcia in meetings.
  

What We Know Today:

• Garcia is not even a registered party member, much less a party official. Government party officials know of no formal role Garcia has played with the party, except to hand out flyers or cater events.
  
  
• Garcia, Borja and Hansen did not meet at the party's headquarters office; they met at a house owned by Garcia and at Borja's office.
  
  
• Garcia said Borja's office is in the same building as Chevron's legal team in Quito and that Borja's family owns the office building.
  
  
• Borja is not just a "former logistics contractor" for Chevron. He worked on the lawsuit for Chevron, helping to obtain soil samples for contamination testing as recently as March, only a few weeks before the first meeting with Garcia was secretly recorded.
  
  
• If Hansen is a businessman with an expertise in oil clean-up work and who owns his own remediation company, he does not advertise his services. (Chevron has confirmed that the only "Wayne Hansen" listed on any internet search engine is not the same Wayne Hansen who filmed the meetings.)
  
  
• Nowhere on the video recordings do any government officials, the plaintiffs or the judge discuss or accept a bribe.
  
  
• Despite what Chevron said about not paying for their services, Chevron paid Borja relocation expenses for him and his family to move to the US and for "interim support." Chevron has offered to pay both men's legal fees for the two top criminal defense lawyers Borja and Hansen have hired. The lawyers work in San Francisco, only a few miles from Chevron's headquarters in San Ramon.
  

Note that Borja's attorney, Cristina Arguedas, represented Hewlett Packard's former general counsel Ann Baskin in the pretexting scandal.

Chevron should pay attention - they may end up needing Arguedas' help as well…