Chevron indicted for polluting Amazon, oil disasters that threaten life

Oil pollution in Ecuador

“My mother died from your cancer.  You killed my mother.”  The man fought back tears as he spoke with John Watson, CEO of Chevon about the world’s greatest oil disaster.

The painful experience of Servio Curipoma is an illustration of the pain many people have suffered in San Carlos, Ecuador.  Curipoma is a father, and he made a journey to speak with the head of Chevon to tell him of the terrible consequences to his small town that was ravaged with Chevron oil pollution.

Years ago the world’s largest oil spill occurred in Ecuador and the townspeople of San Carlos continue to experience tragedy as a consequence of the 18 billion gallons of spillage into the Amazon.  Thousands of people were left to suffer from cancer and children born with birth defects.  It has been a losing battle, these simple farmers and other townspeople fighting the giant resources of Chevron, that continues to deny any responsibility for what happened.

The Sierra Club is petitioning the US Senate to investigate Chevron and end the corporate greed they say causes these disasters.  The message from this environmental organization to President Barack Obama is to work towards ridding the world of fossil fuels and their subsequent dangers.

CBS News also has reported that the break in an open pipeline that caused an oil spill in Ecuador now threatens Brazil and Peru.  The beautiful region of the Amazon is now contaminated in many places by oil.

In 2011 a court in Ecuador ruled against Chevron.  The company was consequently ordered to pay $18 billion in damages, but Chevron continues to contest the ruling, arguing it has never operated in Ecuador and that Texaco stopped operations 21 years ago, remediating an pollution it had caused.

Yet the oil seeping into the Amazon continues, even as it is said 80,000 people have contaminated drinking water.

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has indicted Chevron for the oil spill that began 30 years ago.