By Professor Harry Sachse, Partner, Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson and Perry, LLP, Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Deep Oil often comes up accompanied by highly toxic water. In the United States, producers are required by state and federal laws to drill “disposal wells” and pump the toxic water back into the formation it came from, where it hurts no one and even aids production.
In 1967,
Texaco and its Ecuadorian partners made a major oil discovery in the Amazon in
Ecuador near the Columbian border, in an area where the Sarayaku indigenous
people live. There was no law in Ecuador
requiring it to drill disposal wells, so Texaco simply dumped the water in the
local rivers. The result was high cancer rates and miscarriages, amounting the
destruction of village life for the Sarayaku.
Deep Oil often comes up accompanied by highly toxic water. In the United States, producers are required by state and federal laws to drill “disposal wells” and pump the toxic water back into the formation it came from, where it hurts no one and even aids production.
In 1967,
Texaco and its Ecuadorian partners made a major oil discovery in the Amazon in
Ecuador near the Columbian border, in an area where the Sarayaku indigenous
people live. There was no law in Ecuador
requiring it to drill disposal wells, so Texaco simply dumped the water in the
local rivers. The result was high cancer rates and miscarriages, amounting the
destruction of village life for the Sarayaku.
An Ecuadorian lawyer, not trusting Ecuadorian courts and feeling that the United States should hold its companies to some minimal standard when they do business abroad, sued Chevron, which by then had bought Texaco in federal court. The court held it had no jurisdiction over Chevrons’ actions abroad. But should not the United States require some standards of decency for American corporation operating abroad?
