Chevron in Ecuador
Thanks to my former student Kelby for alerting me to this Newsweek article on Chevron's efforts to avoid getting hit for a large judgment by a court in Ecuador for environmental damage. Chevron wants the Bush administration to punish Ecuador in response. Execs have approached the U.S. Trade Representative, who apparently is amenable to the idea of removing trade preferences if the Ecuadorian court doesn't back off.
But the juiciest part of the article is the quote from a Chevron lobbyist, which is priceless:
"We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this—companies that have made big investments around the world."
We don't need to look too much further to understand why U.S.-Latin American relations are at an all-time low. We invest, so we're unaccountable. You're small, so you don't have a say in the matter.
4 comments:
Hyperbole aside, forcing Chevron to pay $16 billion is extortion, plain and simple. The lobbyist had one too many cocktails before be commented, but what he should have said is "We view this move by the Correa government as a form of extortion against Chevron, who is one of the largest private employers in this area, employing X people and contributing $X to the local economy." It's always easy to throw darts at foreign multinationals (especially when they are American oil companies), but this journalist fails to mention the taxes that Chevron pays in Ecuador to extract that oil, and what alternatives Ecuador has (i.e. sell more of their souls to Chavez) to extract that oil.
I totally agree. When you pay taxes, you should not have to face local courts at all. And any country that allows foreign oil companies to invest should give them blanket exemptions from all local law.
Fair is fair. If you contribute to the local economy, then sovereignty should be suspended.
The issue is not exemptions from local laws. The issue is inventing arbitrary local laws out of thin air to punish multinationals due to the whims of a leftist, anti-US government. Or worse, having judges who legislate from the bench instead of interpret the laws on the books.
As I said, beating up on US oil companies is certainly an easy target. But it is not necessarily justified in all cases.
What laws were "invented out of thing air"?
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