Chevron Wins Over Ecuadorian Injustice, But Should Oil Drillers Be Encouraged?
Today US Federal District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, NY, USA, ruled that the 2011 decision by an Ecuadorian court was obtained with fraud and therefore is unenforceable. Chevron plans to expand South American drilling as well as other exploration world wide now that the $9.5 B judgment and property seizure has been overruled. The Ecuadorian forces pushing for the judgment against the big oil producer argued that ground contamination by Texaco, now part of Chevron, of the Amazon rainforest justified seizure of all Chevron drilling assets and a hefty fine. Today’s judgment means those assets will be released to permit continued Chevron drilling and exploration. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-04/ecuador-judgment-against-chevron-ruled-a-fraud-by-u-s-.html
Contrast Chevron’s South American success with discoveries of a 30,000 year old virus by Aix-Marseille University (AMU) researchers in Siberia. Due to melting permafrost in Siberia, a 98-foot-deep permafrost sample was extracted near the East Siberia Sea. In the sample scientists discovered a large, never before studied virus that affects amoebas. While the newly named Pithovirus Sibericum virus poses no known risk to humans, the same cannot be stated by Jean-Michel Claverie, a bio-informatics researcher and co-author of the AMU study, about other pathogens found in permafrost samples. Claverie and other scientists argue that with increased oil drilling in newly thawed permafrost areas, unknown pathogens will be released that may introduce diseases against which humans have no defenses. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ancient-virus-resurrected-after-30000-years-scientists-say/
Analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com point out that risks from rising sea levels will displace hundreds of millions of people well before pathogens possibly released from permafrost reach civilization to cause health risks. So the greater risks on which scientists and governments should focus concern global warming impact on coastal cities, not permafrost oil drilling.
What do you think? Are oil developers unleashing Pandora’s box of horrors, or will millions drown before they have a chance to get sick from new pathogens? Or should we instead watch how the US court system seems to overrule courts from other nations such as Ecuador with impunity to favor big oil interests?
