oil spill

Amazon Defense Coalition: Chevron Lawyer Stumbles in 60 Minutes Interview over Ecuador Oil Contamination

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This is a story that deserves wide circulation. Makeup doll blowback:

Amazon Defense Coalition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2009-05-04

Karen Hinton, 703-798-3109
karen@hintoncommunications.com

Sylvia Garrigo Compares Makeup on Her Face to Heavily Contaminated Toxic Waste Pits; “Public Relations Disaster” for Chevron

Watch the 60 Minutes program online

New York (May 4, 2009) – Chevron shocked the public relations and legal worlds Sunday by allowing a relatively unknown in-house lawyer to stumble through an interview trying to defend the company on 60 Minutes against charges that it is responsible for the world’s largest oil contamination in Ecuador, where it faces a $27 billion liability.

The spokesperson, Sylvia Garrigo, did not disappoint the company’s detractors – she quickly made the bizarre claim that trace amounts of oil in the makeup on her face was no more harmful that the toxic sludge filmed by 60 Minutes in hundreds of unlined waste pits Texaco built in Ecuador’s rainforest that are still polluting soils and groundwater, according to an independent court expert.

One viewer who posted comments on the internet compared Garrigo’s performance to satirical appearances by Dan Akroyd on Saturday Night Live. Another found it shocking that Chevron did not put forth David O’Reilly, the company’s CEO, to defend the company in what 60 Minutes called the largest environmental legal case ever.

Sadly for Chevron, Garrigo’s performance had nothing to do with satire.

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Oil spill in the Ecuadorian Amazon

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It’s a disaster.

colonos is here reproducing an article from the Ecuadorian national daily El Comercio (in Spanish).

The extent of the spill is yet to be determined, but basically it occurred due to a rupture of the 305km long pipeline running from the Amazon to the coast. On Tuesday, the pipeline broke in the cantón El Chaco in the rainforest at the foothills of the Andes where it runs 20m under the ground. The river Santa Rosa turned black. The pipeline carried 130,000 barrels of crude at the moment of rupture. The company reports that the oil exports are guaranteed until the end of the month. Clean up, according to the company, might last over a year. But how clean is clean?

Fecha: Miércoles 25 de Febrero de 2009
Fuente: El Comercio

La rotura de una de las sueldas de la tubería del Oleoducto de Crudos
Pesados (OCP) ocasionó un derrame de petróleo de proporciones en el
cantón El Chaco.

A las 10:30, María Macas se sorprendió al ver que el río Santa Rosa era
una gran mancha negra que corría lentamente. Uno de sus mayores temores se hizo realidad ayer: hubo un derrame de petróleo que cubrió el cauce del río, las piedras y la maleza de las orillas.
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