Take Action! Defend the rights of communities in Ecuador who have been threatened by ChevronTexaco (CVX)

Whether you are an individual or part of a group, you can take steps to ensure that ChevronTexaco (CVX) is held to account and help protect communities in Ecuador. Read the facts below and find out click here to send a message to the ChevronTexaco (CVX) Board of Directors now. We will be updating this page soon with new actions based on the results of the recent shareholder meeting of ChevronTexaco (CVX) which you can read about here. Contact the Corporate Action Network at corpaction@aiusa.org to learn more.

© Amazon Watch Luis Ahua (Huaorani), Toribio Aguinda (Cofán), and Luis Yanza (farmer and coordinator) present a past due invoice to ChevronTexaco's CEO
© Amazon Watch Luis Ahua (Huaorani), Toribio Aguinda (Cofán), and Luis Yanza (farmer and coordinator) present a past due invoice to ChevronTexaco's CEO.

The Facts
  • For over four decades, Indigenous communities have witnessed multinational oil companies cut through the delicate Ecuadorian Amazon jungle and their ancestral lands in search of the country's vast petroleum resources.
  • Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, began prospecting for oil in Ecuador in 1964, becoming the first company to discover commercial quantities of oil in the country. Texaco set the standards for oil operations in the region and remained the operating partner through its joint venture with the state-owned oil company.
  • According to the 1991 report "Amazon Crude" by the environmental lawyer Judith Kimerling, from 1972 until it left Ecuador in 1992, Texaco intentionally dumped more than 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewaters into the region and was responsible for 16.8 million gallons of crude oil spilling from the main pipeline into the forest. By comparison, the infamous Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in 1989 spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude off the coast of Alaska. The report alleges that these actions contaminated both the soil and the groundwater of the communities in the area and will continue to threaten the economic and cultural bases of Indigenous peoples' survival.
  • Health reports published in renowned medical journals point out the relationship between higher cancer rates and living in the proximity of oil fields, and between miscarriage rates and living in the proximity of contaminated water streams. In some streams, the levels of oil chemicals like hydrocarbon concentrations were as high as 280 times the permitted levels in the European Community.
  • Meanwhile, ChevronTexaco (CVX) has not only refused to acknowledge any link between the public health hazards and the environmental problems caused by its drilling policies in the Ecuadorian Amazon, but has also refused to clean up the pollution, claiming that a controversial ‘clean up’ agreement with the Ecuadorian Government has released it of any further liability. The company has further denied direct compensation to the affected communities for threatening their health and their economic and cultural survival by polluting their environment. The Amazon residents have been fighting this problem in courts since 1993.
  • Amnesty International USA, along with other socially responsible investors, has co-filed on a shareholder resolution submitted to the Board of Directors of ChevronTexaco (CVX), asking them to address the situation in Ecuador. This resolution will be voted on between March 27 and April 27.

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