July 18, 2010

"Big Oil Makes War on the Earth "

Fifty years ago, Shell sank its first 17 wells in the Delta. The rest is history written as nightmare: unparalleled government corruption, ecocide, impoverishment.

Ellen Cantarow writes on "distant and exotic spills" that can show residents of the Gulf of Mexico: "your emerging hell has been the living hell of local populations for decades."

Excerpt: "In its first 25 years, Texaco pumped 1.5 billion barrels of oil out of the Oriente region. According to one estimate, the company discharged 345 million gallons of pure crude oil into Ecuador’s rainforest and waterways.  In 2009, Amazon Rights Watch reported that the company, by its own estimates, had dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater directly into the environment. Next to its hundreds of wells, Texaco dug into the forest floor at least twice as many unlined waste pits. That it intended the filth from the pits to flow into forest streams is clear, because it installed drainage pipes that allowed for just such run-off. “Pits,” by the way, is a euphemism for oil-sewage swamps, as is evident both in this photograph and this video.

"Forty years of oil exploration and production have translated into the slow poisoning of Oriente’s land, its people, its animals, and its crops. With no other water source, local tribes are forced, as in the Delta region in Nigeria, to use contaminated water for drinking, bathing, and cooking. A Harvard medical team and Ecuadorian health authorities have described eight kinds of cancer that result from this sort of contamination. Birth defects are legion in the region, as are skin diseases, which torment even newborns.

"In 1993, 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians brought a class-action lawsuit against Texaco (which merged with Chevron in 2001 to become Chevron-Texaco, the world's fourth-largest investor-owned oil company). “60 Minutes” called it “the largest environmental lawsuit in history.” The plaintiffs are seeking $27 billion in compensation for their suffering and for the restoration of their world.  The lawsuit is still pending.

"Last month, some Ecuadorian indigenous leaders visited the Gulf Coast to show solidarity with another indigenous people, the Houma of Louisiana. A joint group then took a boat tour through bayous where the Houma have fished for generations. Mariana Jimenez, from Ecuador’s Amazon, reached over the side of the boat into gray water, grasping a handful of once-verdant marsh grass.  It drooped lifelessly in her hand, leaving dark brown blotches of crude oil on her palm. “I see it,” she said. “It’s just like Ecuador. They talk about all the technology they have, but when there’s a situation like this, where’s the technology?”

Read full article here

Source: TomDispatch.com, 18 July 2010

"Ellen Cantarow is a journalist whose work on Israel/Palestine has been published widely for 30 years including at TomDispatch. She is now working on climate change and big oil, which have much to do with the Middle East, Israel, and Palestine, as well as the rest of the planet."