Ecuador/Chevron dispute enters a new chapter: Correa calls for Latam support
President Rafael Correa said he expects the regional groupings Alba and Unasur to meet urgently and address the “legal aberration” committed by a UN trade law arbitrage tribunal against Ecuador in a case involving US multinational Chevron and decades of environmental damages.
“We urgently need Latinamerican unity to avoid the abuses of the multinational corporations that consider us colonies and have on their pay-list the arbiters and arbitrage centres” in defence of the interests of those powerful corporations, blasted the Ecuadorean leader recently re-elected by a landslide.
According to Correa an international arbitrage tribunal recently ordered Ecuador to impede the execution of a sentence from an Ecuadorean court against Chevron ordering the US multinational to pay 19 billion dollars for environmental damage in the Ecuadorean Amazon from 1964 to 1990.
Formed via The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration under the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, the panel ruled Ecuador violated a treaty with the United States requiring it to ensure the company gets a fair trial.
The ruling comes a year after the tribunal reinforced its 2011 finding on enforcement suspension. The panel will consider all the case's issues next year. An Ecuadorean court first ruled against Chevron in February 2011.
However Ecuador has denounced the Reciprocal Investment treaty with the US, enforced in 1997 since it considers it is contrary to the country’s interests.
“We are still suffering the lethal inheritance of the long, dark neo-liberal night with these criminal investment treaties”, blasted Correa again denying the applicability of the US-Ecuador treaty.
“It’s the end of sovereignty, the end of our independence; we have become colonies with these rulings from international courts. Dare to imagine if the situation was the other way around and the court ruled against the US?”
Correa complained that the international arbitration tribunals always rule benefiting the multi-national corporations and against sovereign states, because that is why they are there, and that is why in the interest of Ecuador and Latinamerica I have been fighting for our own arbitrage mechanisms”.
He also claimed that Chevron “has been involved in an international PR campaign to destroy Ecuador, and in world media to discredit the Ecuadorean justice system.
Correa was particularly furious with the international arbitrage ruling because it appealed to the investments reciprocal treaty with the US, which became effective in 1997, despite the fact that Texaco which was later sold to Chevron, definitively left Ecuador in 1992 when the corporation was not protected by the treaty.
Furthermore he argued that the environmental court case in Ecuador against Chevron was started fifteen years ago by social organizations from the Amazon and thus the case belongs to private law.
Nevertheless “the international tribunal in a scandalous attitude considers itself competent to deal with the case and orders the suspension of the ruling of our courts and is punishing Ecuador because its president did not order the suspension of the sentence: they are completely out of their minds!” underlined Correa.
“Obviously we are going to defend the country with all our means; we are going to let the world know about this aberration, so that is why Latinamerican unity is crucial to avoid the abuses of these multi-national corporations that consider us colonies”.
Correa then went on to claim the world is ruled by ‘big money’, which is the cause of the current world crisis, in the European Union, where capital dominates the lives of human beings, and markets dominate societies.
“Changing all this is the great challenge for humanity this century. We Latinamerica peoples must rebel against these injustices and need urgent meetings of the Bolivarian Alliance for our peoples of the Americas and the Union of South American Nations”, concluded Correa.
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They are all the same, All South American Nations are persecuted by the rest of the world.
The South American Nations are never to blame for their own mistakes and mismanagement.
You can't have it both ways. Pull the other SA countries into your vortex and watch the FDI move in one particular direction......down.
Take responsibility for you past agreements and read the contracts in the future. Either you guys can't read English or are too stupid to negotiate a contract......which is it?
Oh lordy!
Why is it the competent countries (like Chile) are able to manage foreign investment to increase our wealth, yet others continually f**k it up. They take the investment, they don't regulate it properly, their own corrupt society allows no end of damage to be done, then they turn around and rant about colonialism.
The problem is the corruption in your own backyard! If you put half the effort in to combating corruption that you do ranting about economic colonialism, you would make progress rather than just noise.
”that is why in the interest of Ecuador and Latinamerica I have been fighting for our own arbitrage mechanisms”
So you can always rule in your favor.
If Chevron did in fact pollute the Amazon they should be made to pay on exactly the same scale as BP.
@12 there is paying proportionally and then there is partisan mugging. At one end you have union carbide whose failures killed thousands and have paid pennies at the other end there is BP whose failure killed 11 and have paid $40 billion to date with potential exposure to 10s of billions more....hummm.
Those are the rules, and Ecuador should understand them.
Apparently according top you, BP has no responsible for the damage they commited in the Gulf of Mexico. You sound like a “they are picking on me” RG. 1984 Bhopal is about as relavent to today as.....nothing! If you think the USA firms don't get fines....you are either ignorant, stupid, a moron or all three and I choose the later.
BP mgt is criminally negligent and culpable for man slaughter muder and should be brought to criminal justice. However that was diplomatically. BP can always drill somewhere else.
What is that word you call yourselves?....oh ..yes wankers
#12 let's face reality that Texaco was the caustive firm, Ecuador had a treaty they ignored and pulled out. Don't sign treaties that you have no intent to fulfill. With the exception of one of two countries, South American countries do not honor treaties, contracts, debts and argeenments with private business. SA is hardly a mm step above Africa as a developed continent.
My comments were clearly outlining the difference in actions and perceptions by US americans regarding a environmentally damaging US company and what they perceive to be a non-US company. In actuality BP is a multinational company.
Your reaction just outlined precisely what I was saying. To you Bhopal is irrelevant (deaths of thousands of indians), but the BP issue is criminal (deaths of a few americans).
Apparently indian lives are worthless.
Well said Shed.
No one is saying BP did not have responsibility and culpability here, however it’s fucking amazing how Haliburton, an American company, who did the work that failed, and supplied the equipment that failed (the BOP, the one piece of kit on a rig that must never fail), walk away Scott free!!!!
Nothing to do with being owned by Dick Chainey then.
I think you will find BP are drilling elsewhere these days, not that it will make any difference to the US.
Also amazing how at the time BP, which has been the company name for 30 years +, suddenly became British Petroleum again in Obama’ comments. Was the company still known as that in the US then?????
There is a big difference between being kept to your obligation and responsibilities, and what is it you call it, oh yes “a shakedown”.
then in @20 you said “Don't go saying I think Bhopal is irrelevant....because I don;t believe that and never stated that.”
Urm... so which is it then?
@19 Yeh, and Haliburton then went on to do the same thing in the Timor Sea which literally pyssed oil the australian and indonesian coasts. Did they have to sign a $30billion cheque for that one either?
You must be aware that the people posting on this thread are not anti-US trolls.
The precedent for paying out compensation for industrial negligence in the US goes back to at least 1928 in the case of the “Radium Girls”. So in 1984 the legal precedent existed. The administration at the time should have no baring on the law. It is a disgrace that union carbide's failings caused the death of thousands of people and they walked away.
The size of the payout by BP is unprecedented and totally disproportionate. $40 billion and rising. Sure they can drill elsewhere, but that kind of money can break even an oil company.
There is a double standard here.
“This is his first step in his efforts to replace Hugo Chávez as the chief clown in Latin America.”
Hugo II.
He gets his fingers caught in the cookie jar of corruption,
And expects ali barber and the 40 thieves to bail him out,
Does south America now thinks it can do what it wants , when it wants , and then refuse any liability , responsibility , or compensation to others,
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he has been sitting next to CFK for far to long lol.
You think his vacation house needs an upgrade?
The colonies in North and Lat.Am were started at the same time..
Getting them to spend huge sums supporting sports like poorball and watch tv all day does the job of taking away any excess income and motivation they may have for educating themselves or self-betterment.
They stay poor, and voting for the populist.
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Very good
The man loves money.
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.
Please rid your country of all foreigners. Obviously they must be the source of all your problems. And just think,.. you won't have to bitch about them any more or the rest of the world! I am so sick of the little catch-words like: bolivarianism, imperialism, colonists, capitalists,..blah, ba, blah, ba, blah.
Please work harder to rid ecuador of direct foreign investment dollars, there are a few dollars left. With a little more work, your fiefdom will be complete as all your serfs love you.
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