lago_agrio_oil - Synonyms for lago_agrio_oil

Examples of "lago_agrio_oil"
The most important natural resource in the province is oil, the Lago Agrio oil field. Thus, Sucumbíos is one of the most important provinces in the country, economically.
The film follows the progress during 2006 and 2007 of a $27 billion legal case brought against the Chevron Corporation following the drilling of the Lago Agrio oil field, a case described by activists as an “Amazon Chernobyl”.
Pablo Fajardo Mendoza (or Pablo Fajardo) is an Ecuadorian native of Cofán descent, who was raised in extreme poverty. With the help of the Roman Catholic Church, he put himself through law school in the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja. He was the lead lawyer against Chevron Corporation, representing thousands of natives in the Lago Agrio oil field, formerly developed by Texaco.
Lago Agrio Canton is a canton of Ecuador, located in the Sucumbíos Province. Its capital is the town of Nueva Loja. Its population at the 2001 census was 66,788. The region contains the Lago Agrio oil field which is at the heart of a high-profile court case against Chevron.
Bonifaz has also litigated international human rights and environmental law cases, and, with his father Cristobal Bonifaz, has litigated against Chevron Corporation regarding pollution in the Lago Agrio oil field in the Ecuadorian Amazon. (Cristobal Bonifaz is a native of Ecuador.)
The area around the city, the Lago Agrio oil field, has many ecological problems. The rainforest has been all but obliterated in this region and environmental degradation is severe, with catastrophic oil pollution in some areas. On February 14, 2011, a judge in Lago Agrio ruled that Chevron, now owner of Texaco, had to pay $9 billion in environmental damages for polluting the rainforest, in an unprecedented environmental ruling.
The Lago Agrio oil field is an oil-rich area near the city of Nueva Loja in the province of Sucumbíos, Ecuador. It is located in the Western Oriente Basin. The site's hydrocarbon-bearing formations are the Cretaceous Napo and Hollin formations. Oil was discovered in the area in 1960s. The Lago Agrio field is known internationally for the serious ecological problems that oil development has created there, including water pollution, soil contamination, deforestation and cultural upheaval.
To call public attention to the case and to put pressure on Chevron to clean up the pollution, Donziger helped his Ecuadorian clients organize a public relations campaign that garnered attention from major media outlets. His efforts included bringing plaintiffs to Manhattan to appear in their native dress in court, arranging for plaintiff to attend Chevron's annual shareholders meetings, and arranging “toxic tours” of the Lago Agrio oil fields for reporters.
Due to their lack of environmental laws, emerging countries like Ecuador have been subjected to environmental pollution, sometimes causing health problems, loss of agriculture, and poverty. In 1993, 30,000 Ecuadorians, which included Cofan, Siona, Huaorani, and Quichua indigenous people, filed a lawsuit against Texaco oil company for the environmental damages caused by oil extraction activities in the Lago Agrio oil field. After handing control of the oil fields to an Ecuadorian oil company, Texaco did not properly dispose of its hazardous waste, causing great damages to the ecosystem and crippling communities.
From 1965–1993, Texaco participated in a consortium to develop the Lago Agrio oil field in Ecuador. It has been accused of extensive environmental damage from these operations, and faces legal claims from both private plaintiffs and the government of Ecuador. The case has been widely publicized by environmental activists and is the subject of Crude, a 2009 documentary film by Joe Berlinger. Chevron claims that it is being unfairly targeted as a deep pocket defendant, when the actual responsibility lies with the government and its national oil company.
Steven R. Donziger (born in 1961) is a Harvard-educated American lawyer, former public defender, writer, speaker and environmental activist who came to prominence representing indigenous groups and farmer communities in Ecuador's rainforest (specifically around the Lago Agrio oil field) in a case against the former oil field operator Texaco, now part of Chevron Corporation. The class action case was originally filed in 1993 on behalf of an estimated 30,000 rainforest villagers in federal court in New York, but in 2001 a U.S. federal judge moved it to Ecuador’s courts at Chevron’s request after the company accepted jurisdiction there.
In 1964, the Texaco Petroleum Company, in partnership with Gulf Oil, started exploring for oil in Northeast Ecuador. In 1974, the Government of the Republic of Ecuador, acting through the state-owned oil agency Petroecuador, obtained a 25% interest. Two years later, Petroecuador acquired Gulf Oil's interest and became a 62.5% owner of the Lago Agrio oil field. By 1993, Petroecuador had also acquired Texaco's interest. After Texaco completed environmental remediation, the Government of Ecuador inspected and certified the work and ”absolved, liberated and forever freed” Texaco Petroleum from “any claim or litigation by the Government of Ecuador.” Nevertheless, in November 1993, a group of Ecuadorians filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of 30,000 inhabitants of the Oriente region, alleging that Texaco polluted the rain forests. After extensive litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed in Aguinda v. Texaco an earlier court's dismissal on the basis of "forum non conveniens." Thus, legal proceedings were started in Ecuador in 2003.
Lawyers for Ecuadorean plaintiffs in the long-running lawsuit against Chevron Corporation for environmental and human health damages at the Lago Agrio oil field hired Kennedy to conduct public relations for their cause. She traveled to Ecuador in 2009, after which she blasted Chevron in an article for the Huffington Post. Neither her Huffington Post piece nor the news coverage of her advocacy disclosed that she was being paid by the plaintiffs, a fact not made public until 2012. The plaintiffs' lead American lawyer reportedly paid Kennedy $50,000 in February 2010, and the plaintiffs' law firm budgeted $10,000 per month for her services, plus $40,000 in expenses in June 2010. Kennedy was also reportedly given a 0.25 percent share of any money collected from Chevron, worth US$40 million if the full amount were to be collected. Kennedy responded that she was “paid a modest fee for the time I spent on the case,” but denied that she had any financial interest in the outcome.
Amazon Watch supports the Ecuadorian plaintiffs by publishing a press kit alleging that Chevron (corporate successor to Texaco) should be held accountable for the dumping of of toxic waste water into a region of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest inhabited by more than 30,000 people – purported to be one of the largest oil related contaminations ever, far exceeding that of the Exxon Valdez disaster. A 2011 decision in Ecuador ordered Chevron to pay $9.5 billion. Ecuador's Supreme Court in 2013 affirmed the trial court judgment in a 222-page decision that documented the extensive and life-threatening levels of oil pollution at dozens of former Chevron well sites in the jungle. In all, eight appellate judges in Ecuador reviewed the evidence against Chevron and affirmed the judgment as well as dismissing Chevron's allegation of fraud. When Chevron refused to comply with the $9.5 billion judgment against it for contamination in the Lago Agrio oil field, the plaintiffs' lead attorney, Steven R. Donziger, attempted to collect the judgment in Brazil, Argentina, and Canada. Chevron then filed suit in the United States, and relying on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Act), alleged that plaintiffs' attorneys in the Lago Agrio litigation had engaged in extortion and fraud by paying almost US$300,000 in bribes to obtain the 2011 court verdict in Ecuador. On 4 Mar 2014, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that "the course of justice was perverted" and enjoined Donziger from instituting any enforcement proceedings in the United States. Donziger has appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
One problem in attracting development was Argentina's price controls on natural gas, keeping the price down to US$2.00-$2.50 per million BTU. However, the government exempted tight gas from controls, and in 2011 the Vaca Muerta gas was selling for US$4–$7. The higher gas prices attracted major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Total S.A., and Chevron Corporation to Vaca Muerta. In September 2016, after the change of government in Argentina, YPF said that proposed new rates for gas would permit the continued development of gas in Vaca Muerta. In May 2013, YPF announced that it had negotiated a joint venture in which Chevron would invest US$1.5 billion drilling 132 wells on the Loma Campana field. Chevron's participation was complicated by efforts by the plaintiffs who obtained a judgement in Ecuador with respect to actions by Texaco in the Lago Agrio oil field to collect the judgement from Chevron's Argentine assets. On September 24, 2013, YPF announced that Dow Chemical Company subsidiary Dow Argentina had signed an agreement to drill 16 natural gas wells in the El Orejano block of the Vaca Muerta formation over a 12-month period, with Dow contributing US$120,000,000 and YPF US$68,000,000. Shell Argentina CEO Juan Jose Aranguren was quoted on December 10, 2013, as saying his company, with 4 producing wells in Vaca Muerta and 2 more drilling, would increase capital spending in Argentine shale to "about" US$500 million in 2014 from US$170 million in 2013. Luis Sapag, of the Sapag family which has dominated Neuquén politics for half a century, was reported by Bloomberg in December 2013 as saying that the YPF-Chevron joint venture would invest as much as US$16 billion if the US$1.2 billion pilot venture was successful by March 2014, which would generate almost US$9 billion in royalties for Neuquén. In January 2015 YPF indicated that it and Chevron had already invested over US$3 billion in their Loma Campana venture, which YPF described as the most important unconventional (oil) project in the world outside the United States.