International Court Hands Chevron Partial Victory in Ecuador Pollution Case

A three-judge international arbitration panel in The Hague this week handed US oil giant Chevron a partial victory in its ongoing legal dispute with indigenous groups in Ecuador.The international panel found that the agreement signed in 1995 by Texaco (which Chevron later purchased) and the Ecuadorian government, in which Texaco agreed to clean up waste in the Lago Agrio region, now releases Chevron from financial responsibility from any claims of “collective damage.”In 2011, an Ecuadorian court had ruled that Chevron must pay $19 billion USD for water and soil contamination that Texaco had caused in the Amazon rainforest...