Chevron fights allegations of human rights, environmental abuses

SAN FRANCISCO — A young boy holds out a deformed hand. A woman is missing a lower leg that was amputated to remove a tumor. A gaunt middle-aged man lays in a hammock dying of stomach cancer.

The haunting images displayed in a photo exhibit at San Francisco City Hall claim to document the devastating effects of more than three decades of oil extraction in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest.

Humberto Piaguaje came to help launch the exhibit and seek justice from the powerful petroleum company he blames for sickening his people and poisoning his homeland. He's one of 30,000 plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit that alleges San Ramon-based Chevron Corp. failed to clean up billions of gallons of toxic waste dumped in pristine rainforest in Ecuador, where a lengthy trial is under way.

"We've lived there for thousands of years, and we've never had diseases like this before," Piaguaje, a leader of Ecuador's Secoya tribe, said in Spanish. "We want Chevron to do a true cleanup of the areas they contaminated."

Chevron, one of the world's largest oil companies, has denied human rights and environmental violations in the 180 countries where it operates, but allegations of abuse threaten its public image around the world. Critics claim such abuses are increasing as the global scarcity of petroleum drives oil companies into countries with rich reserves but poor protections for human rights and the environment.

"It's the resource curse," said Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International. "Unfortunately, the rule around the world is that where you have oil extraction, you see increasing rates of poverty, human rights abuses and environmental destruction."

In Ecuador, the plaintiffs estimate it will cost $6 billion to clean up 18.5 billion gallons of oily wastewater that Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, dumped into more than 600 unlined pits and streams between 1972 and 1990.

Chevron is also fighting lawsuits filed in San Francisco by Nigerian villagers who claim the company's subsidiary supported military attacks on protesters in the oil-rich Niger Delta. A federal lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial next fall, and a trial for a state class-action lawsuit is set to start in 2007.

Chevron lawyers deny the plaintiffs' claims in both Chevron and Ecuador and believe they will prevail in court.