Speaker 1: Combe Conger, give us a comic comb.
Speaker 2: This is Maria Aginda, an indigenous woman in Ecuador, singing
Speaker 2: about the damage that oil companies have done to her community.
Speaker 3: She was the lead.
Speaker 2: Plaintiff in the case against Texaco and then Chevron in Ecuador.
Speaker 2: It's usually referred to as the Aginda Case after her.
Speaker 2: In the decades since the case began, there have been
Speaker 2: various attempts alternately to lionize and discredit her, to cast
Speaker 2: her as a victim of the oil companies or as
Speaker 2: a pawn of the plaintiff's attorneys. There is a mountain
Speaker 2: of situations like this in this case, where one side
Speaker 2: says one thing, the other side says the exact opposite thing,
Speaker 2: and there's no way that both could be true. These
Speaker 2: sorts of things started to really pile up in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, five years after the case had initially
Speaker 2: kicked off again in Ecuador.
Speaker 3: Basically, to close a pit require eight different steps.
Speaker 2: This is Ricardo rays Vega, who led Chevron's legal team
Speaker 2: in Ecuador on this case. In this video with lots
Speaker 2: of cheesy sound effects, he's explaining the steps that Texico
Speaker 2: took back in the nineteen nineties to remediate its drill
Speaker 2: sites in Ecuador.
Speaker 3: You had to take the oil out, you had to
Speaker 3: clean the sludge. You had to freak the water and
Speaker 3: take the water out, but you had to pass tests
Speaker 3: of the water. You had to solidify the basis. Then
Speaker 3: you had to put new dirt and revegetate.
Speaker 2: Around the same time that the case against Chevron was
Speaker 2: filed in Ecuador, in two thousand and three, the government
Speaker 2: of Ecuador filed a criminal complaint against Raisvega and another
Speaker 2: lawyer working for Chevron on the case, Rodrigo pees Paladis.
Speaker 2: The complaint alleged that the two had falsified documents around
Speaker 2: Texaco's remediation work. You might recognize pees Paladis's name from
Speaker 2: episode two. He was the Texico attorney meeting with the
Speaker 2: president at his beach house to discuss the company's troubles
Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety four. In two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: the government was questioning whether the nineteen ninety eight document
Speaker 2: releasing Texico of all future liability for its operations in
Speaker 2: the country was the product of fraud. That complaint was
Speaker 2: thrown out in two thousand and six for lack of evidence,
Speaker 2: and then refiled in two thousand and eight. At that point,
Speaker 2: Viga and Paladis were indicted for conspiracy to fraudulently certify
Speaker 2: Texico's cleanup. Chevron says this was all rigged up by
Speaker 2: the plaintiffs and points to it as a clear indication
Speaker 2: that the government and the court's under President Rafael Correa
Speaker 2: were in cahoots with the plaintiffs, that there was no
Speaker 2: way they could get a fair trial in Ecuador. Here's
Speaker 2: Randy Mastro, an attorney who's been working on this case
Speaker 2: for Chevron since two thousand and nine.
Speaker 4: He got Ecuadorian authorities, without any basis whatsoever, to bring
Speaker 4: criminal charges against two of the old Texico lawyers who
Speaker 4: were involved in negotiating the releases. When Texico left the
Speaker 4: country in the early nineties, those two lawyers faced criminal charges.
Speaker 4: They couldn't even travel. One of them was had to
Speaker 4: leave family in Ecuador, all right, on bogus criminal charges.
Speaker 4: They had done nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: The he in that sentence is Donziger, and it's striking
Speaker 2: how much Mastro's description of what happened to these lawyers
Speaker 2: in Ecuador matches how Donziger describes his situation today.
Speaker 5: I cannot travel, I don't have a passport.
Speaker 6: I cannot leave my apartment.
Speaker 2: This kind of he said, He said, has going on
Speaker 2: for years in this case, with each side calling out
Speaker 2: the tactics of the other, each side trying to get
Speaker 2: the other to flinch. In an outtake from a documentary
Speaker 2: about the case, Donziger talks about this dynamic between the
Speaker 2: legal teams.
Speaker 5: We have to keep pushing on all fronts at all times.
Speaker 6: That's simple, all fronts at all times.
Speaker 5: Push, push, push. It's just a matter of force. It's
Speaker 5: a pure force. Who can put the most pressure and
Speaker 5: who can resist. It's just like all this bullshit about
Speaker 5: the law on facts. You know, Yeah, that factors into
Speaker 5: it because that affects the level of force. But in
Speaker 5: the end of the day, it is about brute force.
Speaker 5: Who can apply the pressure and who can withstand the pressure,
Speaker 5: and can you get them to the breaking point. It's
Speaker 5: the only way to litigate a case against a powerful
Speaker 5: company on behalf of people who.
Speaker 2: Have no how that pushing was happening in the legal sphere.
Speaker 2: Of course, as the case dragged on, each side accused
Speaker 2: the other of obstruction and delay tactics, but both sides
Speaker 2: were also meeting with judges and playing politics, both in
Speaker 2: the US and in Ecuador, and the case was really
Speaker 2: playing out in the press. By two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: and two thousand and nine, the plaintiffs seemed to be
Speaker 2: winning on all fronts. Welcome back to Drilled Season five,
Speaker 2: La Lucha and Lunga. If you haven't listened to the
Speaker 2: first three episodes, you're going to need to do that
Speaker 2: for this one to make any sense. Today we're going
Speaker 2: to get into how this case played out in the
Speaker 2: press and how that played into the verdict in Ecuador.
Speaker 2: All of that coming up right after this quick break.
Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen, the Washington Post reported on the remarkable
Speaker 2: case of a woman who'd spoken out to make sure
Speaker 2: that the man who sexually assaulted her was brought to justice.
Speaker 2: The post new investigative podcast explores everything that happened after.
Speaker 2: It's called Canary. The Washington Post investigates. You may have
Speaker 2: seen their cover art in the podcast apps I Love It.
Speaker 2: Canary is a podcast about what happened when that unusual
Speaker 2: public warning connected to women, and how that warning led
Speaker 2: to a devastating allegation about a powerful man in the
Speaker 2: DC criminal justice system. You can find Canary the Washington
Speaker 2: Post investigates right now, wherever you get in your podcasts.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and seven, William Languish was getting ready
Speaker 2: to run a big feature in Vanity Fair on the
Speaker 2: case against Chevron in Lago Agrio. He had done his homework.
Speaker 2: He'd gone to the town and to the remediation sites.
Speaker 2: He'd met with various scientists, He'd talked to the lawyers
Speaker 2: on both sides. The last thing he needed was responses
Speaker 2: from Chevron to a list of technical questions.
Speaker 7: One of the list of questions that I assembled with
Speaker 7: Donsker's help, very technical ones. There were sites specific how
Speaker 7: the remediation went and then what the findings were during
Speaker 7: the sort of opposing sample sampling that was done during
Speaker 7: the court case. They said that they wanted to talk
Speaker 7: to me, and they wanted me to come. I said, look,
Speaker 7: I'm happy to talk to you, but only if you
Speaker 7: answer those questions first.
Speaker 2: Seven years later, those questions became a weapon that Chevron
Speaker 2: used to question Languish's journalistic integrity, mainly because he asked
Speaker 2: Donziger for his input on them, which frankly is a
Speaker 2: little weird, but Languish explained that he needed Donziger's input
Speaker 2: on some of the more technical questions for accuracy, and
Speaker 2: that he was hoping Donziger could help him freeze the
Speaker 2: questions in such a way that Chevron would feel more
Speaker 2: compelled to answer at any rate. Here's what happened as
Speaker 2: he was working on the story.
Speaker 7: Answer those questions yes or no, tell me what your
Speaker 7: response is, and if you answer the questions, I'm very
Speaker 7: happy became at that point. For they never, of course
Speaker 7: answered the questions. They were very specific questions. Yeah, and
Speaker 7: then they went after Conde to asked, but they had
Speaker 7: Grayton Carter and Graydon Carter had balls.
Speaker 2: Graydon Carter, of course, was the longtime editor of Vanity Fair.
Speaker 7: Those are the days when it was kind of the
Speaker 7: last years of Braydon Carter being like, don't mess with
Speaker 7: Braidon Carter. So they when the threat of lawsuit came in,
Speaker 7: when Chevron started pulling that stuff and threatening, you know,
Speaker 7: basically saber rattling, heat it up to it, and we
Speaker 7: went through We did go through a verification process. The
Speaker 7: piece was in no sense affected by that process. There
Speaker 7: was absolutely no censorship of any kind. But what did
Speaker 7: happen is that I in that piece had lines that
Speaker 7: were intentionally surreal and facetious. Anything it wasn't absolutely factual
Speaker 7: had to leave. So the effect of that on the
Speaker 7: piece at the time, I thought that basically dulled the
Speaker 7: piece down, like, who the hell wants to read this thing?
Speaker 7: It's as dull if it has no life to it anymore,
Speaker 7: And then maybe you saiveryone had that effect, although recently,
Speaker 7: and because of the Donziger's current troubles, saying maybe six
Speaker 7: months ago, I read the piece again, I think that's
Speaker 7: a pretty damn good piece. Actually it wasn't as bad
Speaker 7: as I thought it was at the time.
Speaker 2: That piece triggered an uptick in media attention on the case,
Speaker 2: which kept building in two thousand and eight. Then in
Speaker 2: April that year, the two Ecuadorians who'd been lead eating
Speaker 2: a lot of the work on the ground, Luis Giansa,
Speaker 2: who we met in episode two, and Pablo Fajardo, were
Speaker 2: awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prives.
Speaker 8: Unas Tarvis control stodas Hsi mass in his semi processway
Speaker 8: formsion ilucha parechos aravida on tano jalla Housticia.
Speaker 2: I happened to be living in San Francisco at that
Speaker 2: time and was actually at this awards ceremony. I remember
Speaker 2: Luis and Pablo getting a standing ovation from the crowd.
Speaker 2: This was happening right in Chevron's backyard, and they weren't
Speaker 2: super pleased about it. They took out a full page
Speaker 2: ad in the San Francisco Chronicle calling Fajardo and Yanza frauds,
Speaker 2: but it didn't seem to work. The press continued to
Speaker 2: stack up in favor of the plaintiffs.
Speaker 3: Now we want to go to Ecuador, where an epic
Speaker 3: lawsuit hits an American oil giant against a group of
Speaker 3: Indians from the Amazon rainforest and environmental activists.
Speaker 9: We turned out to Chevron oil giant based in California
Speaker 9: that's being accused of promoting geopolitical blackmail and its effort
Speaker 9: to stave awful lawsuit accusing it of contamidating the Ecuadoran
Speaker 9: Amazon rainforest.
Speaker 2: It's been many years now since residents of eggs. In response,
Speaker 2: Chevron amped up its pr and lobbying efforts. Its lobbyists
Speaker 2: began pushing against a trade deal that would benefit Ecuador,
Speaker 2: and in an email dated September two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: various Chevron pr folks are going back and forth with
Speaker 2: one of their external publicists, a guy named Chris Guidez,
Speaker 2: who at the time was with the firm Helen Knowlton,
Speaker 2: about a report that they're preparing the cast doubt on
Speaker 2: the Equadorian plaintiffs and on some of the evidence that
Speaker 2: they've presented in this case. They're also cracking jokes about
Speaker 2: not wanting to eat anything that comes out of the
Speaker 2: water in Lago Agrio. A lot of the report that
Speaker 2: the pr team is working on and talking about in
Speaker 2: these emails seems to focus on the science in the case.
Speaker 2: As we heard last time, it's common in Ecuador for
Speaker 2: both plaintiffs and defendants to commission their own expert reports
Speaker 2: and submit those to the court, and both sides did.
Speaker 2: The plaintiffs hired a US firm called Stratus Consulting. Here's
Speaker 2: one of their experts, Douglas Beltman, talking to sixty minutes.
Speaker 6: It's a disgrace.
Speaker 10: They treated Ecuador like a trash heap.
Speaker 6: Hey with those stream here.
Speaker 2: It's Doug Beltman worked for the EPA on super fun
Speaker 2: sites in the US. He's now the scientific expert for
Speaker 2: the people suing Chevron.
Speaker 7: Are you saying that.
Speaker 3: Texico never could have gotten away with this in the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 10: Oh, absolutely not. It wouldn't have happened in the United States,
Speaker 10: and if it had happened, they wouldn't have gotten away
Speaker 10: with leaving it here for thirty years.
Speaker 2: And here is a Chevron appointed expert, Pedro Alvarez, professor
Speaker 2: of Civil and Environmental engineering at Rice University.
Speaker 11: When Techaco left Ecuador, the site that it operated a
Speaker 11: would consider represented a relatively safe scenario for with regards
Speaker 11: to potential impacts to human health, both because of the
Speaker 11: measures that they took to contain and clean up any contamination,
Speaker 11: and because of the nature of the contaminants that have
Speaker 11: very little mobility and therefore little probability to reach a
Speaker 11: potential receptor.
Speaker 12: On the charge of lasting environmental damage.
Speaker 11: That is a vastly exaggerated charge that is unsupported by
Speaker 11: the evidence.
Speaker 2: You can see why the judge might want a report
Speaker 2: from an independent expert. The court appointed a guy named
Speaker 2: Richard Cabrera. He was tasked with taking and testing samples
Speaker 2: from all of the former well sites and drafting a
Speaker 2: report about which sites had been remediated, which sites were
Speaker 2: still contaminated, and how much it would cost to clean
Speaker 2: everything up. He comes up a lot in this story
Speaker 2: from here on out, including in Chevron's PR emails. Just
Speaker 2: a couple weeks after the Chevron reps were emailing about
Speaker 2: Cabrera in this report, Chevron's longtime PR consultancy Singer of
Speaker 2: Singer Associates, sent the team a new strategy. It breaks
Speaker 2: down into three key areas to focus on. One corruption
Speaker 2: in Ecuador and Corea as the strong man of Ecuador.
Speaker 2: Two counter attacks against the plaintiffs, including questioning the funding
Speaker 2: and motives of Cabrera, Donziger and Ecuadorian lawyer Pablo Fajardo.
Speaker 2: Three Petro Ecuador is the real culprit. It's a full
Speaker 2: court press. There are four separate PR agencies, including singers,
Speaker 2: and they're coordinating with Chevron's PR team. It includes plans
Speaker 2: for all forms of media and advertising, and even money
Speaker 2: for a front group or a singer puts it quote
Speaker 2: the US Chamber of Commerce or another think tank or
Speaker 2: organization to create an organization solely devoted to addressing the
Speaker 2: issues of Ecuador and actively attacking its positions on business,
Speaker 2: the media, international loans, and socialist policies. But before this
Speaker 2: strategy could deliver results, the plaintiffs continued to pick up
Speaker 2: some wins. First, a bill that extended trade benefits to Ecuador, Peru, Colombia,
Speaker 2: and Bolivia, a bill that Chevron had been lobbying against.
Speaker 2: It passed.
Speaker 3: Thank you all for coming.
Speaker 13: I'm pleased.
Speaker 3: That legislation extending the nd and Trade Preference Act has
Speaker 3: made it to my desk, and I'm looking forward to
Speaker 3: signing this piece of legislation.
Speaker 2: Then in two thousand and nine, a documentary on the
Speaker 2: case called Crude was announced.
Speaker 3: Locate On.
Speaker 1: Now has just been in destruction.
Speaker 5: The total area in which texacooted.
Speaker 2: In March, the Chevron PR team was strategizing again, and
Speaker 2: chrisky Is wrote, quote, our lt long term strategy is
Speaker 2: to demonize Donziger. This film provides us a great opportunity
Speaker 2: to do so.
Speaker 8: It's not by a single.
Speaker 2: Before the film came out sixty minutes aired, it's special
Speaker 2: on the case.
Speaker 6: These are people who never believed they had a right
Speaker 6: to sue an American company in their own court system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know what Chevron says.
Speaker 3: They say that this is being driven by a New
Speaker 3: York plaintiff's lawyer, and they don't mean that as a compliment.
Speaker 13: I'm well aware of that.
Speaker 6: They've taken out advertisements in the equadorm press with my name,
Speaker 6: trying to attack my reputation.
Speaker 2: What do you think of that?
Speaker 6: Well, I think that it puts me in the membership, frankly,
Speaker 6: of a very distinguished club of people.
Speaker 2: With the media narratives spiraling out of its grasp, Chevron
Speaker 2: brought in the big dogs, the law firm Gibson Done
Speaker 2: in fall two thousand and nine. The firm was just
Speaker 2: wrapping up a landmark case for Dole, the food company,
Speaker 2: which had also been fighting a damages suit in Latin
Speaker 2: America for decades. Nicaragua and Banana farmers had sued the
Speaker 2: company for knowingly spraying their fields with a pesticide that
Speaker 2: causes sterilization. They won in a Nicaragua court, but Gibson
Speaker 2: Dune attorneys argued that that court had no jurisdiction over Dole,
Speaker 2: an American company.
Speaker 14: When did you get involved in the case?
Speaker 7: What year?
Speaker 4: Late two thousand and nine, early twenty ten.
Speaker 2: That's Randy Mastro again. He led Gibson Dunn's work for
Speaker 2: Chevron on the case.
Speaker 14: In Ecuador, Okay, and what were you know? What was
Speaker 14: sort of the task.
Speaker 13: Gibson Dun was asked to join the team of outside
Speaker 13: council representing Chevron in connection with the litigation in Ecuador
Speaker 13: and in connection with trying to find out the truth
Speaker 13: about what was going on in Ecuador.
Speaker 2: By this point, not only was the media tipping in
Speaker 2: favor of the plaintiffs, but President Correa had been publicly
Speaker 2: supportive of the suit as well. Luis Jansa, Ecuador says
Speaker 2: it wasn't even so much that Correa was a great
Speaker 2: friend to the plaintiffs. He just wasn't as much in
Speaker 2: the pocket of oil companies as previous Ecuadorian presidents had been.
Speaker 15: Losioris sien pre estaman.
Speaker 2: In parcel comp Previous governments were always biased in favor
Speaker 2: of the company, he says, nonsotrosimos. We had to have
Speaker 2: a lot of actions in Quito, with marches, meetings, press conferences,
Speaker 2: meetings with politicians, all of that, a lot, a lot,
Speaker 2: a lot of work to neutralize the government just so
Speaker 2: they didn't bow completely to the company. When Correa was elected, though.
Speaker 3: He.
Speaker 2: Visited the area and talked to the people and realized
Speaker 2: the magnitude of the damage the company had done and
Speaker 2: that the struggle we had been carrying out for more
Speaker 2: than a decade was just and he decided to support it.
Speaker 2: He end the CEO. And on top of all that,
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight, Ecuador had ratified a new constitution,
Speaker 2: one that gave equal rights to indigenous people, and that
Speaker 2: included a radical new idea, yeah, the rights of nature.
Speaker 2: Ecuador was the first country to include these rights in
Speaker 2: its constitution. At some point, we're going to do a
Speaker 2: whole season on rights of nature because it's fascinating and
Speaker 2: it's really become an interesting new legal tool. But in
Speaker 2: broad strokes, if you think about private property rights and
Speaker 2: how they ascribe control over nature to whatever human has
Speaker 2: purchased this piece of land, rights of nature says, forget
Speaker 2: that nature has its own rights. All life forms have
Speaker 2: the right to exist and to continue living. And here's
Speaker 2: where it gets interesting from a legal perspective. It says
Speaker 2: that legally, we the people have authority to enforce these
Speaker 2: rights on behalf of ecosystems. The ecosystem itself can be
Speaker 2: named as the defendant. It's hard to imagine Chevron or
Speaker 2: really any oil company being happy about this kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And so, in two thousand and nine, with multiple pr
Speaker 2: firms and a new legal team, on board, the company
Speaker 2: started to tell a different story.
Speaker 12: A bitter environmental lawsuit against Chevron, the second largest oil
Speaker 12: company in the United States, appears to be entering its
Speaker 12: critical phase in Ecuador.
Speaker 2: First, they hired former CNN reporter Gene Randall to host
Speaker 2: a mirror image version of the sixty minutes documentary with
Speaker 2: their side of the story.
Speaker 12: Chevron asked toxicologist Thomas mchu to study the issue.
Speaker 10: The health effects that reported are attributable to exposure to bacteria,
Speaker 10: which is widespread in the drinking water sources. They're not
Speaker 10: attributable to petroleum exposure, no.
Speaker 12: Doubt about that.
Speaker 10: There's no doubt in my mind.
Speaker 12: Despite the claims that's correct, there are fears such findings
Speaker 12: may be trumped by politics. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa loudly
Speaker 12: supports the case against Chevron's At Correa's instigation, with the
Speaker 12: support of the Amazon Defense Coalition, seven Ecuadorian officials who
Speaker 12: signed Texico's environmental liability release faced criminal charges.
Speaker 2: He's talking about the attorneys we mentioned at the top
Speaker 2: of this episode, Ricardo Risvega and Rodrigo Perez Palaris, along
Speaker 2: with seven Ecuadorian officials. They were accused of tampering with
Speaker 2: a release form that had become pretty central to Chevron's
Speaker 2: defense in this case. Shortly after that nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: meeting we mentioned in episode two, where Texico's lawyer was
Speaker 2: meeting with the president and various environment ministers, the government
Speaker 2: came to an agreement with Texaco about remediation. Here's Chevrons
Speaker 2: spokesperson Kent Robertson explaining that arrangement to NPR. In late
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight.
Speaker 15: Texico held a thirty seven percent interest in the consortium,
Speaker 15: with its majority partner being Petro Ecuador. Texico is not
Speaker 15: operated in Ecuador for eighteen years. When it was time
Speaker 15: for Texico to depart Ecuador, the party sat down and
Speaker 15: worked out a remediation program where Texco would address its
Speaker 15: proportionate share of the consortium thirty seven zero point five percent,
Speaker 15: and Petro Ecuador assumed responsibility for the balance of the operations.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety eight, after they had remediated thirty seven
Speaker 2: point five percent of the pollution, Texico submitted documentation to
Speaker 2: the government and the government signed a document releasing the
Speaker 2: company from any further cleanup. Again, the argument the plaintiffs make,
Speaker 2: and that the lawyer and researcher Judith Kimerling made to
Speaker 2: us as well, is that Texico was the operator, and
Speaker 2: that means they set everything up and they taught everyone
Speaker 2: how to do things. They created the oil industry in Ecuador,
Speaker 2: and they set a low standard for environmental responsibility. I
Speaker 2: asked Randy Mastro about that.
Speaker 14: We've had a few people kind of float this idea
Speaker 14: of like, yes, okay, technically Petro Ecuador has been doing
Speaker 14: all this stuff, but you know it was Texco who
Speaker 14: trained them, and it Texco who built the whole system.
Speaker 14: What is the response to that kind of line of thought?
Speaker 4: Wow, that is revisionist history and you know, trying to
Speaker 4: put the blame where it doesn't belong. Texago got kicked
Speaker 4: out of the country starting in nineteen ninety. Texico spent
Speaker 4: you know, back in the early nineties, you know, forty
Speaker 4: plus million dollars on remediation and other relief, and in
Speaker 4: those days, that was a lot of money. And in
Speaker 4: independent testing services confirmed that Texico did what it was
Speaker 4: supposed to do.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of things in this story, this is
Speaker 2: kind of true if you squinted it for long enough.
Speaker 2: Texico began exploring for oil in Ecuador in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: four thanks to an agreement with the military junta that
Speaker 2: controlled the country at the time. The company struck black
Speaker 2: Gold in nineteen sixty seven. At that time, Texico was
Speaker 2: in a partnership with Golf Oil, and both companies were
Speaker 2: eventually acquired by Chevron. In nineteen seventy four, Ecuador formed
Speaker 2: a state owned oil company, which would later become Petro Ecuador.
Speaker 2: Texico and Golf each gave up a portion of their
Speaker 2: ownership to the new state oil company, and then in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven, Petro Ecuador bought Golf out and they
Speaker 2: became the majority shareholder. Texico retained ownership of thirty seven
Speaker 2: point five percent of the concession. That's why that number
Speaker 2: keeps cropping up, but it continued to be the operator
Speaker 2: overall of all of the consortiums exploration and production assets
Speaker 2: until nineteen ninety. In September nineteen eighty eight, Petro Ecuador
Speaker 2: alerted Texco that it intended to take over as operator
Speaker 2: by nineteen ninety. In nineteen ninety, texpet and Petro Ecuador
Speaker 2: entered into an agreement to transition operations of the oil
Speaker 2: fields from Texpat to Petro Amazonas. Texico retained its minority
Speaker 2: stake in the concession until its original contract expired in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, and in nineteen ninety four, Texico's lawyer
Speaker 2: was being flown in Petro Ecuador's plane to the president's
Speaker 2: beach house. Which doesn't exactly sound like they were kicked
Speaker 2: out of Ecuador. Here's Mastro again.
Speaker 4: So a professional and you and a company expert in
Speaker 4: doing these things got kicked out of the country and
Speaker 4: remediated the wells that it was responsible for, and at
Speaker 4: every level of the Ecuadorian government there were releases for
Speaker 4: that activity. Then over the next twenty years, because Ecuador
Speaker 4: kicked Texaco out of the country, only Petro Ecuador drills
Speaker 4: and spills, no oversight, none of the kind of you know,
Speaker 4: professionalism that might be expected, you know, just drilling and
Speaker 4: spilling to make money for Ecuador.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder, here's Judith Kimberling on what she saw
Speaker 2: when Texico was drilling professionally in the Ecuadorian Amazon in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 16: The company had just dug a hole in the ground,
Speaker 16: dumped their toxic drilling waste, and then abandoned it in
Speaker 16: the rainforest. And when you abandon toxic waste in the rainforests.
Speaker 1: Some of it seats into the ground.
Speaker 16: You also get a lot of rain, so it overflows
Speaker 16: into the surrounding areas, and I was appalled.
Speaker 2: Mastro and his firm were hired in lead. Two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, the sixty Minutes special had come out. Equadorian
Speaker 2: attorneys Luisiansa and Papa Cardo had gotten the Goldman Environmental Prize,
Speaker 2: Equadorian President Rafael Correa had voiced public support for the case,
Speaker 2: and the Constitution of Ecuador had been changed to include
Speaker 2: the rights of nature. A documentary about the case by
Speaker 2: an award winning filmmaker was about to debut at Sundance,
Speaker 2: and the balance of power in this case was about
Speaker 2: to shift again next time on Drilled.
Speaker 7: No way would any rational person, He's very rational, jeopardize
Speaker 7: things by cutting horse. He did nothing, He didn't bribe anyone.
Speaker 7: He has a big mouth and he mouthed off this
Speaker 7: guy kill prill insurer.
Speaker 1: I think if I had it to do over, I
Speaker 1: would advise my client to completely protest the trial. And
Speaker 1: unfortunately Steven didn't have that option. Because Steven lives in
Speaker 1: New York and he's subject to the jurisdiction of the
Speaker 1: court and he has to defend the case. But my
Speaker 1: clients did have that option, and that was not a
Speaker 1: card we chose to play.
Speaker 16: You know, I'm not trying to encourage you guys to
Speaker 16: focus on the misconduct. I think that's what Chevron wants
Speaker 16: us to all being. But the point I want to
Speaker 16: make is that, you know, while I think that the
Speaker 16: actions against Steven are excessive, I don't think that he's
Speaker 16: just a victim because he's a human rights defender. I mean,
Speaker 16: I think that narrative is very simplistic.
Speaker 2: Drilled is an original production of the Critical Frequency podcast Network.
Speaker 2: It's created and reported by me Amy Westerveldt. My co
Speaker 2: reporter on this season is Karen Savage. Our editor is
Speaker 2: Julia Ritchie. The show's editorial consultant is Rika Murphy. Mixing
Speaker 2: and mastering by Mark Bush. Original score by b Beeman.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Larissa Ikeda, Trevor Gowen, and Emily Gertz.
Speaker 2: Our fact checker is wu Dan Yan. Our First Amendment
Speaker 2: attorney is James Wheaton with the First Amendment Project. Our
Speaker 2: artwork for this season was created by the talented Matt Fleming.
Speaker 2: If you are a Patreon subscriber, Thank you. Your money
Speaker 2: is helping to make this season. As a special thank you,
Speaker 2: we will be putting bonus content in the Patreon feed
Speaker 2: and also releasing episodes early there. If you're not a
Speaker 2: member and you want to support our work, please check
Speaker 2: out patreon dot com slash drilled. That's it for this time,
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.