Environmental activists will descend on ChevronTexaco’s annual shareholders’ meeting in San Ramon today, pushing two resolutions they hope will force the global oil giant to re-examine its ways.
One asks the company to consider spending more time and money cleaning up a corner of the Ecuadoran Amazon where Texaco once pumped oil.
The other seeks a written report on the environmental damage that could be caused by drilling in sensitive areas, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The company opposes both and has asked its shareholders to reject them at today’s meeting, calling them unnecessary.
“Your board believes ChevronTexaco has expressly committed to conducting its business in a socially responsible and ethical manner that protects people and the environment,” the company says in its proxy report.
Both resolutions come from activist shareholders intent on changing the behavior of a company that works in virtually every kind of ecosystem – from shallow coastal seas to dense jungles to deserts. The activists count as allies the immense state pension funds of California and New York, both of which support the resolutions.
“No matter how much of the earth’s natural resources we decide to sacrifice, we cannot drill our way to energy independence,” said Larry Fahn, president of the Sierra Club. The environmental group filed the resolution concerning the Arctic refuge.
The activists’ chances of success, at least in the short run, may be slim.
A nearly identical resolution on Ecuador at last year’s shareholder meeting won just 9 percent of the vote. Even if the resolutions passed, neither would be binding.
Still, supporters consider the resolutions a way to focus the company’s attention on environmental concerns they say have been swept aside in the search for more oil.
“It just raises the urgency of the issue inside the corporation,” said Shelley Alpern, vice president of Trillium Asset Management. The firm, one of many specializing in socially oriented investing, submitted the resolution on Ecuador.
Activists are trying to pressure the company in other ways, as well. A photo exhibit at a San Ramon restaurant this week depicts environmental destruction in the Amazon that its sponsor, the San Francisco nonprofit group Amazon Watch, blames on ChevronTexaco.
Two Bay Area photographers, Lou Dematteis and Kayana Szymczak, took the photos displayed at Mudd’s restaurant. Environmental groups also are expected to demonstrate outside the shareholders’ meeting this morning.
ChevronTexaco considers both proposals misguided.
It insists that the Arctic refuge can be drilled for oil without harming the caribou herds and other wildlife there. Chevron, together with British rival BP, drilled an exploratory well there 20 years ago and maintains its lease on the land.
“Opening up ANWR is an important step forward in meeting our nation’s energy needs,” said company spokesman Donald Campbell. “The petroleum industry’s north slope (of Alaska) record provides overwhelming evidence that ANWR coastal plain development would not be harmful to the Arctic ecology and wildlife.”
In Ecuador, the company is embroiled in a lawsuit over contamination that plaintiffs say has inflicted cancer and birth defects on residents of the rain forest.
Texaco, before its 2001 merger with Chevron, drilled in Ecuador from 1964 to 1992, working as a partner of the state oil firm, Petroecuador. The operation dumped an estimated 18.5 billion gallons of wastewater into unlined pits near the oil wells, according to environmental groups.
When Texaco pulled out, it spent $40 million cleaning up a portion of the area. The government then released Texaco from any further obligations, while Petroecuador continued pumping in the area.
ChevronTexaco has fought the suit on several fronts. It argues that it has fulfilled the terms of its agreement with the Ecuadoran government and has no more responsibility for cleaning the area. The company and the environmentalists also have taken turns attacking each other’s analysis of soil and water tests that are part of the court case.
The latest example came Tuesday when Amazon Watch, a nonprofit organization helping the plaintiffs, sent ChevronTexaco Chief Executive Officer David O’Reilly a letter accusing the company of issuing misleading statements about contamination in the area. The company immediately rejected it.
“We stand by our data, which is based on sound science and developed in connection with the Ecuadoran courts,” said company spokesman Russell Yarrow. “We take exception to almost everything in this letter.”
E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com
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