News and Multimedia from 2004
Bianca Jagger Shares Honour
8 October 2004 | The Guardian
Bianca Jagger, a leading Latin American environmental scientist and a Russian civil rights organisation are this year's winners of what has become known as the alternative Nobel prize. Read more...
Court Goes to Oil Fields In Ecuador Pollution Suit
27 August 2004 | The New York Times
August has brought the start of judicial inspections by Ecuadorean authorities of sites that residents contend were polluted by a subsidiary of what is now ChevronTexaco. It is the latest wrinkle in an 11-year legal battle over whether the company should pay an estimated $6 billion to clean up a swath of the Ecuadorean Amazon. Read more...
Incidence of Childhood Leukemia and Oil Exploitation in the Amazon Basin of Ecuador
July 2004 | International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health
This disturbing scientific report published in the July 2004 edition of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health by Anna Karin Hurtig and Miguel San Sebastian, links Chevron's extensive oil contamination of the Ecuadorian rainforest to instances of child leukemia that are three times the national average. Read more...
ChevronTexaco Faces Class-Action Lawsuit in Ecuador Over Environmental Damage
11 May 2004
A resolution asking ChevronTexaco to report on new initiatives to address its legacy of environmental damage in Ecuador gained nine percent support from shareowners. Read more...
Amazon Indian Leader Tells ChevronTexaco His People are on the Brink of Extinction Due to the Company's Oil Contamination
ChevronTexaco CEO Attempts to Shift Blame for Oil Disaster – Calls Ecuador's Government "Inept" and "Inadequate"
29 April 2004 | Amazon Watch
At yesterday’s ChevronTexaco Annual Meeting, CEO David O’Reilly was met with a growing wave of controversy over the oil pollution his company left in the Ecuadorian Amazon following two decades of drilling. Amazonian indigenous leader Toribio Aguinda, renowned human rights advocate Bianca Jagger, shareholders and local clergy and labor leaders each appealed to Mr. O’Reilly for his corporation to clean up the expansive oil contamination his company created and that has resulted in an environmental disaster and health crisis in the rainforest region. Read more...
Bianca Jagger Speaks About Ecuadorean Health at Chevron Texaco Annual Meeting
28 April 2004 | Associated Press
Thrusting a celebrity's punch into a long-running battle, social butterfly-turned-social activist Bianca Jagger urged ChevronTexaco Corp. Wednesday to clean up an environmental quagmire in the Ecuador jungles where the oil giant once thrived. Read more...
Pressure Mounts on ChevronTexaco to Confront its Responsibility for the "Rainforest Chernobyl"
$6 Billion in Potential Liability For World's Largest Oil Disaster
26 April 2004 | Amazon Watch
As ChevronTexaco prepares for its Annual Shareholder Meeting on Wednesday, April 28th at its bucolic suburban office park outside of San Francisco, a host of players are moving closer to creating a "tipping point" to force the petroleum giant to confront its responsibility for the “Rainforest Chernobyl” that it systematically created in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Read more...
ChevronTexaco Investors Travel to Ecuador for Fact-Finding Mission about the Corporation's Controversial Oil Operations
Representatives Control More than $360 Million in Company Stock
Will View Oil Pits, Meet with Indigenous Communities Suing ChevronTexaco, and Hear from Company Representatives
Amazon Watch
ChevronTexaco Investors travel to Ecuador forfact-finding mission about the corporation's controversial oil operations. Representatives control more than $360 million in company stock. Will view oil pits, meet with indigenous communities suing ChevronTexaco, and hear from company representatives. Read more...
Article on March 2004 Investor Delegation to Ecuador
ChevronTexaco on the Defensive
3 March 2004 | San Francisco Chronicle
Suit in Ecuador Alleges Drilling by Texaco Caused Environmental Damage in Amazon. Read more...
Chevron Contract with Ecuadorian Military
This 2004 contract details cooperation between Chevron and the Ecuadorian military over the use of facilities on a base near Lago Agrio. The close relationship between Chevron and the military is worrisome for the integrity of the trial, as evidence shows Chevron has attempted to use this relationship to influence the proceedings. Read more...
A Public Health Emergency
Oil exploitation in the Amazon basin of Ecuador: a public health emergency
Pan American Journal of Public Health
This report by Miguel San Sebastián and Anna-Karin Hurtig, which was published by the Pan American Journal of Public Health in 2004, summarizes the evidence that there is a public health emergency in the Ecuadorian Oriente, and that these conditions are linked to the region's history of oil exploitation and pollution. Read more...
Ecuador: Taking an Oil Giant to Task
12 January 2004 | International Herald Tribune
Drilling for oil without adequate safeguards is one of the most destructive processes to man and the environment. This fact has been particularly apparent in the Ecuadorean area of the Amazon basin, where Texaco - which later merged with Chevron - drilled for oil from 1964 through 1992. Read more...