Among the sea of dark suits in the auditorium at ChevronTexaco headquarters in San Ramon, one man stood out. Toribio Aguinda was wearing a crown of green parrot feathers on his head, a sacred symbol of his authority as the leader of the Cofan nation in the Ecuadoran Amazon.
Aguinda had traveled 3,000 miles from his home in the rainforest to speak at ChevronTexaco’s annual stockholder meeting to demand the company address the ecological effects of widespread oil contamination in the region of Ecuador where Texaco operated from 1964 to 1992.
Aguinda and a group of activists faced Chevron shareholders and lobbied for a proposal in which the company would accept additional liability for its role in the spill and begin efforts to thoroughly clean up the region.
Though the resolution failed after a preliminary ballot count showed 91 percent of shares against it, it was the first time the issue of the company’s responsibility for the oil contamination in Ecuador had come before shareholders in the form of a resolution.
The company has also been facing a well-publicized class-action lawsuit brought by 30,000 Amazonian peasants and Indians in Ecuador over the contamination.
After a presentation by corporate directors on the company’s net income of $7.2 billion and recent oil discoveries in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico, Aguinda addressed the nearly 200 people assembled at the meeting.
“Before ChevronTexaco came to the Amazon, we had extensive lands, clean air, clean water and plenty of food,” he said in Spanish. “ChevronTexaco destroyed our land. It is all contaminated … . The Cofan people are on the verge of extinction … . I would like to ask you: Do you want the Cofan people to disappear?”
Several clergy members, union representatives and shareholders also spoke in favor of the resolution, including human rights activist Bianca Jagger, who said she had bought one share of ChevronTexaco stock so she could vote on the matter.
ChevronTexaco Chairman David J. O’Reilly said that there was no doubt there were health problems in the Amazon but that they should not be laid at the company’s feet.
Texaco Petroleum, a Texaco subsidiary, was a minority partner with the state-owned oil company, PetroEcuador, in exploring and developing oil fields in the Ecuadoran rainforest, O’Reilly said. After Texaco ended its involvement, it carried out a $40 million cleanup of a share of the contamination, and in 1998 the government of Ecuador released the company from further liability, he said. PetroEcuador continues to extract oil from the area.
“Any further liability is the responsibility of PetroEcuador,” he told the shareholders. “The environmental damage is not our responsibility. The remedies lie in the purview of the Ecuadoran government.”
The Rev. Steve Harms, pastor of the Peace Lutheran Church in Danville, recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Aguinda’s home at the headwaters of the Amazon River basin, where 18 million gallons of crude oil and toxic waste products have contaminated rivers, streams and soil over 100 square miles.
“We have witnessed the suffering,” he said. “Imagine your response if toxic waste permeated this San Ramon Valley. There is no clean water … everyone is dying slowly of stomach cancer, and there is no medicine.”
Such words caught the attention of shareholders , but did not necessarily sway them.
“You need to balance the corporate response and the government response in Ecuador,” said shareholder Richard Sams, a retired banker from Dublin who voted against the resolution. “If the company response was deemed to be adequate, then they’re being reasonable.”
But activists were not conceding defeat, saying they would offer the resolution again next year. And they are hoping for a favorable verdict in the class-action lawsuit that is being heard in Ecuador. The judge will inspect 50 contaminated sites this summer and review 10,000 pages of evidence. He is expected to rule in early 2005.
Speaking after the stockholder’s meeting, Jagger said she would look for other ways to increase pressure on ChevronTexaco.
“We all want to be part of corporations that are profitable, but not at the expense of human life and the environment,” she said. “I was very disappointed to see Mr. O’Reilly continue in this state of denial, because the people in the Amazon are running out of time.”
