Oil spill in the northern Amazon lowlands of Ecuador

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Unsecured production pit in the Ecuadorian rainforest filled with oily residues from formation water

The oil spill in the northern Amazon lowlands of Ecuador is a large-scale oil spill that occurred between 1964 and 1992 as a result of improper production by the oil companies Texaco (which merged with the Chevron Corporation since 2001 ) and Gulf Oil . Around 60,000 t of oil residues and over 55,000 t of crude oil ended up in the environment. The region around Nueva Loja in the province of Sucumbíos and the corridor of roads and pipelines to the city of Coca and beyond in the neighboring province of Orellana are particularly affected . The contamination has massive and sometimes irreversible ecological and social consequences even decades after it began .

history

Location of the concessions and oil fields in northeast Ecuador
Pipeline on the E10, east of Lago Agrio, not far from the Cuyabeno nature reserve

In 1963, the then military junta of Ecuador awarded after unsuccessful exploration measures by Shell del Ecuador Ltda. (between 1937 and 1950) again production concessions for an area totaling 14,000 km² in the Amazon lowlands (Oriente), which at that time was still an untouched wilderness . In 1967, the two US companies Texaco and Gulf began mining - starting from the city of Coca - north of the Río Napo . This resulted in considerable damage to the environment and people, the extent of which was increased considerably by the active colonization policy for the Amazon lowlands, which the state implemented in the 1960s to 80s.

In 1976, the Ecuadorian state went into production and took over Gulf's share in the oil production consortium with Texaco. In 1990 the state-owned company Petroecuador (founded in 1989) officially took over the promotion of Texaco. In 1992 Texaco left Ecuador for good.

In 1993, 30,000 Ecuadorian citizens sued Texaco for compensation for the substantial damage. According to the complaint, the group has contaminated large areas in the northern Orient since the 1970s and has not adequately compensated for the damage to people and the environment. The application based the following damages:

  • 5,000 km² of destroyed rainforest,
  • Contamination of the environment with 70 billion liters of toxic liquids ( formation water, petroleum residues) and 900 garbage dumps with toxic substances that have poisoned soils, rivers and lagoons,
  • Various health consequences, u. a. Increase in cancer rates in the region.

In 1995, Texaco, in consultation with the then government, paid $ 40 million to repair the most massive damage to the environment. However, the lawsuit was upheld as the plaintiffs considered the payment to be totally inadequate. In addition, the consequences for the health of the population would have been completely disregarded.

In 2002, a US court upheld the lawsuit against Texaco, but referred the motion to an Ecuadorian court. In 2003 the lawsuit against the legal successor Chevron began. In 2009, Chevron (annual sales over $ 200 billion) filed arbitration proceedings against Ecuador to avert the payment. It referred to an investment protection agreement that the USA had concluded with Ecuador in 1995.

In 2013, an Ecuadorian court sentenced Chevron to $ 8.65 billion in damages. However, the group did not accept the judgment because it

  1. considered the payments made by Texaco to be sufficient,
  2. no longer saw any responsibility because the state-owned company Petroecuador took over the shares of Texaco in 1990 -and-
  3. took over the group even after the end of Texaco’s activities in Ecuador.

In 2014, a US federal judge in New York ruled in favor of Chevron. His reasoning was based on the allegation that the plaintiffs' lawyers had influenced the negotiations in Ecuador through bribery and a falsified environmental report. The state of Ecuador then appealed. On June 19, 2017, the appeal was dismissed by the US Supreme Court. The plaintiff's lawyer subsequently lost his license as a result.

The plaintiffs continued to try to enforce their claims against Chevron subsidiaries in Argentina, Brazil and Canada. In Canada, the judges had recently invalidated important arguments of the oil multinational.

In September 2018, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague declared the Ecuadorian judgment invalid. It upheld Chevron's objection that the verdict was based on bribery. In addition, the judgment violated an investment protection agreement between Ecuador and the USA.

Extent of damage and political background

Oil company trucks on a ferry across the Río Napo

Despite a number of reports, one can only speculate about the actual extent of accidents and environmental pollution in the context of oil production with regard to concealed incidents and a lack of official information.

What is certain is that the indigenous peoples in the northern Amazon lowlands were surprised by the oil boom. Texaco in particular worked with the greatest possible profit-orientation in the face of inadequate environmental regulations and a lack of controls. This led to the following side effects within a few decades:

  • Direct consequences
    • Deforestation through the creation of roads, depots, conveyors and pipelines in remote rainforest areas
    • partly irreversible damage from the environmentally toxic effects of released crude oil, sewage and waste products from the oil industry ( soil degradation , water pollution )
  • Indirect effects
    • Settlement and conversion of forest areas into agricultural areas along the access and transport roads
    • social tensions with complex conflicts up to violent clashes and "expulsion" of indigenous ethnic groups (e.g. the Cofán)
    • Many animal species are threatened by overhunting and increasing habitat destruction

Crude oil makes up half of Ecuadorian exports. Oil currencies are correspondingly important and the country suffers accordingly from low oil prices.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Philip Franz Fridolin Gondecki: We defend our forest. Dissertation at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Bonn , online version , University and State Library Bonn, published on January 22, 2015. pp. 237, 260–262, 267, 324
  2. ↑ Heiko Feser: The Huaorani on the way into the new millennium. Ethnological Studies Vol. 35, Institute for Ethnology at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, published by LIT Verlag, Münster 2000. P. 31, 48–49, 135, 144, 213, 263, 295–296.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Alexandra Endres and Lukas Koschnitzke: Article “How corporations drive states in front of them”, section “Chevron against Ecuador” on zeit.de from March 27, 2014, p. 5. / Kathrin Hartmann: Right to Profit , Environment and Development Forum, Berlin, September 2016. p. 22. / Steffen Vogel: US Supreme Court against compensation from Chevron to Ecuador . amerika21.de - News and analyzes from Latin America, June 29, 2017, original source: Cancillería del Ecuador. Retrieved August 10, 2017.
  4. ↑ Kevin D. Williamson: Green Floyd: Roger Waters and the Great Green Chevron Scam. In: nationalreview.com. October 30, 2018, accessed November 5, 2018 .
  5. ^ Court overturns judgment against US oil company Chevron in Ecuador. In: nzz.ch. September 8, 2018, accessed November 5, 2018 .