Not so banana republic ... more like a developed nation exercising its sovereign rights to protect its nature and people

A Brazilian federal prosecutor filed criminal charges on Wednesday against Chevron and drill-rig operator Transocean for a November oil spill, raising the stakes in a legal saga that has added to Chevron's woes in Latin America and could slow Brazil's offshore oil boom.

Prosecutor Eduardo Santos de Oliveira also filed criminal charges against 17 local executives and employees at Chevron and Transocean, owner of the world's largest oil rig fleet. Among the defendants is George Buck, 46, a U.S. national in charge of Chevron's operations in Brazil, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
"The spilling of oil affected the entire maritime ecosystem, possibly pushing some species to extinction, and caused impacts on economic activity in the region," Santos de Oliveira, a prosecutor in the oil district of Campos de Goytacazes, said in the filing. "The employees of Chevron and Transocean caused a contamination time bomb of prolonged effect."

The charges stem from a 3,000-barrel leak in the Frade field, about 120 km (75 miles) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state. They include: failure to realize protocols to contain the leak; failure to take steps to kill the well and stop the drilling process; breach of licenses, legal norms and regulation, including altering documents; and failure to meet legal and contractual duties.

Shell's plans for responding to a blowout and spill for offshore Alaska are laughably weak.

The oil giant Shell filed suit in federal court in Alaska last week against a dozen environmental groups, employing a rare — and rarely successful — legal gambit in an effort to pre-empt anticipated legal challenges to its plans to begin exploration in the Arctic Ocean this summer.

The unusual maneuver an act of desperation by a company fearful that it might be thwarted again in its efforts to begin drilling in the seabed off Alaska’s North Slope? 

The environmental groups who have spent years trying to block its drilling project say that the effects on native communities, air, water and wildlife are too great and that the company’s plans for responding to a blowout and spill are laughably weak. 

While the groups have not announced their intention to go to court to challenge the company’s 450-page oil spill response plan, which was tentatively approved by the Interior Department two weeks ago, the company has every reason to think that they will. 

“We just got the spill plan and are reviewing it,” said Whit Sheard, a lawyer for Oceana, one of the environmental groups named in the Shell lawsuit. “It’s based on technology that doesn’t exist and on faith that a spill won’t happen. What we’ve seen in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea, of course, is that spills do happen.” 

Mr. Sheard said that Oceana and the other groups reserved the right to challenge the plan in court and would use every weapon at their disposal to ensure that drilling, if it ever takes place, is conducted in the safest possible way. He called Shell’s novel legal maneuver “frivolous.” 

“It’s very unusual,” Mr. Sheard said. “I’d suggest it’s either desperate or abusive in terms of the American legal process. It’s not likely to prevail.” 

There are few precedents to guide the court in deciding Shell’s suit, technically known as a complaint for declaratory relief, which essentially asks a judge to declare a lawsuit without merit before it is even filed. 

How about this for a process?  Get the NGOs, Company and regulator in the room; create a document before its filed; the company can naturally object to all the parts they deem uneconomic and the regulator can then regulate....oh I forgot there is more money in it for the lawyers, lobbyists the way we're doing it....

Chevron criminal charges for oil spill

A Brazilian prosecutor plans to file criminal charges against Chevron Corp and some of its local managers within weeks, adding the threat of prison sentences to an $11 billion civil lawsuit as punishment for a November offshore oil spill.

The filing in federal court in Campos, Brazil, will likely include a request for criminal indictment of George Buck, chief executive of Chevron's Brazil unit, as well as other staff, three Brazilian government officials involved in the case told Reuters.

Transocean Ltd, whose rig was used in the operation, and some of its employees in Brazil are also expected to be charged, according to the officials, who requested anonymity because the case has not been presented to a judge. It is up to a judge to determine whether to accept the charges and proceed with indictments.

$18 billion damage award upheld against Chevron

A court of appeals in Ecuador has upheld an $18 billion damage award issued by a lower court in February against U.S. oil giant Chevron for contamination of the Ecuadorian rainforest by its subsidiary Texaco Petroleum.



After reviewing the 220,000 page trial record for 11 months, the three-member appellate panel in the Provincial Court of Justice of Sucumbios in Lago Agrio ruled Tuesday that laboratory results confirm that pollution existed at Texaco's former well sites hundreds of times higher than permissible norms in Ecuador.


Chevron purchased Texaco in 2001, so the plaintiffs consider Chevron responsible for Texaco's liabilities incurred prior to the purchase.


"This decision confirms what we have been saying for years," said Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorian lawyer. "Chevron is guilty of extraordinary greed and criminal misconduct that has created a humanitarian crisis in Ecuador that puts thousands of people at risk."


The 30,000 plaintiffs, who are Ecuadorian indigenous people and farmers, said in a statement Tuesday, "The decision by an independent appellate court is yet further confirmation of Chevron's extraordinary greed and criminal misconduct in Ecuador. The decision is based on overwhelming scientific evidence presented at trial that proved Chevron deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste that poisoned the water supply of the Amazon rainforest, decimating indigenous groups and causing an outbreak of cancers and other diseases that continue to threaten thousands of innocent lives."

The decision is the largest environmental award in history and is the latest development in an 18-year legal battle to win cleanup of contaminated sites, clean drinking water, and health care.


Texaco is alleged to have caused hundreds of oil spills in Ecuador, many of which were "remediated" by setting them on fire and to have poured sludge from the oil waste pits along dirt roads.


"The judges found ample scientific basis to uphold the damages award, including devastating evidence provided the court by Chevron's own team of technical experts that proved levels of pollution hundreds of times higher than permitted by law," said Karen Hinton the Washington, DC-based spokesperson for the Amazon Defense Coalition, the plaintiffs' organization.

Shell spills 1.7 mln gallons of oil on Nigerian Coast

Nigerian officials have suspended fishing off the southern coast after about 40,000 barrels (1.7 million gallons) of crude oil was spilled from a Shell production platform in the Bonga oil field.



The oil leaked into the Atlantic Ocean on December 20, 2011 during what the company called a "routine operation" to transfer oil to a tanker from Shell's Bonga floating production, storage and off-take vessel.

The oily sheen covered an estimated 350-square-mile area off the oil-rich Niger Delta. Shell has shut down the entire Bonga oil field, a site 75 miles off the coast that produces 200,000 barrels of oil and gas a day.


An investigation is underway to determine how 40,000 barrels of oil spilled while being loaded onto the tanker. Shell says a break in a transfer line is to blame.