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Ecuador president accuses Texaco of pollution 'barbarity'
AFP
BOGOTA
Petroleumworld.com 04 30 07Ecuador's President Rafael Correa accused the US oil giant Texaco of causing an ecological disaster in the Amazon, while visiting a region said to be ravaged by pollution from oil drilling.
"Let the whole world see the barbarity of this multinational," the fiery leader said Thursday on a visit to the Sucmbios region around the border of Ecuador and Colombia, where Texaco drilled for crude from 1964 to the early 1990s.
He compared the environmental damage to that cause by the US tanker Exxon Valdez which spilled 42 million liters (11 million gallons) of crude in Alaska in 1989.
Texaco was made to pay 40 million dollars to Ecuador for pollution caused by this spill, and indigenous communities have also launched legal actions to demand billions of dollars in compensation.
The Amazon basin region's four indigenous peoples -- the Siona, the Huaorani, the Cofan, and the Shuar -- in 2003 took on Texaco in the Ecuadoran courts, seeking reparation for alleged damage to half a million hectares (1.24 million acres) of land.
They put the cost of cleaning up the region at six billion dollars, but the company maintained it cleaned up after stopping its activities there.
AFP 27 0953 GMT 04 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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