Ecuador’s Attorney General said Monday his office is preparing the legal basis to contest an international court ruling that ordered the country to pay $1.77 billion plus interest to Occidental Petroleum Corp.
Ecuador officially announced on 8 October 2012 that it will request the annulment of the recent decision of the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) which was communicated on 5 October 2012 (ICSID Decision ARB/06/11).
Ecuadorian communities learned from the way that Chevron’s operations flouted environmental law in the 1990’s, that once entrusted to foreign businesses their natural resources are usually squandered.
The Andean Commission of Jurists and five prestigious international law experts from around the world have joined a growing chorus of criticism targeting Chevron’s attempt to use a secret investor arbitration as part of its campaign to evade an $18 billion environmental judgment in Ecuador, according to letters released today.
On February 11, Chevron will ask a panel of three private lawyers named as "arbitrators" under the BIT to nullify the entire nine-year Ecuadorian court process that recently found the company liable for $18 billion in clean-up costs.
Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. energy company, said it won a $96 million judgment against Ecuador in an international arbitration case stemming from a 1990s oil-export dispute with the Latin American nation.
The office of Ecuador’s Attorney General will represent Ecuador in Washington at a June 30 hearing in the arbitration case filed against the Andean country by US oil company Occidental Petroleum Corp.
The Ecuadorian government hailed a decision by an International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes arbitration panel, which said it lacked jurisdiction over a lawsuit brought against Quito by US-based Murphy Oil Corporation.
Chevron Corp urged a US federal appeals court not to force it into Ecuador’s courts, but to allow it to go to international arbitration, to defend a $27.4 bn lawsuit alleging its oilfields polluted the Amazon rainforest and sickened thousands of Ecuadorians.