18 Oct 2005

Plaintiffs' Expert Reports Show Pattern of Flaws and Distortions; and Lack Credible Scientific Support to Validate Claims

Attempt to Mislead the Public, the Court and the Press

QUITO, Ecuador, October 18, 2005 - A detailed review of technical reports submitted by plaintiffs' experts during the first year of judicial inspections reveals a disturbing pattern of flaws, distortions and technical incompetence, and the complete absence of any credible scientific evidence to support the plaintiffs' allegations.

The judicial inspection process is part of an ongoing environmental lawsuit brought against Chevron relating to the past involvement of its Texpet subsidiary as a minority partner in an oil producing consortium with Petroecuador, the state oil company. The company turned over operations to Petroecuador in 1990, and exited the country in 1992. Superior Court President Efraín Novillo is scheduled to conduct a total of 122 inspections of oil field sites.

In describing the plaintiffs' technical reports and the claims made by the plaintiffs' attorneys, Rodrigo Perez, legal representative for Texaco Petroleum Company, said, "The credibility gap that exists with the plaintiffs and their claims is as wide as the ocean. We did not find occasional examples of problems with their reports. Rather, what we see is a systematic pattern of flaws and distortions. In our rebuttals we have asked the court to reject the findings of the plaintiffs, as we firmly believe they would not pass judgment by any court, whether in Ecuador, the United States or any other nation."

Following its evaluation of seven of plaintiffs' reports, Chevron submitted formal rebuttals to the court regarding the lack of scientific evidence, flawed conclusions and technical incompetence displayed by the plaintiffs' experts. In many instances, the plaintiffs' own data contradicts their conclusions and allegations, and in other cases, the analysis fails to meet the basic methods of environmental science. The plaintiffs also base their findings on regulatory standards that did not even exist at the time of Texaco's operations and remediation.

"To judge Texaco's remediation program against standards that did not even exist at the time of the remediation program defies both logic and law. We believe that legitimate science should prevail over the junk science offered by the plaintiffs," said Perez.

Specifically, Chevron found that the reports submitted by plaintiffs:

  • Make conclusions even when their data fails to support those conclusions or even when they collected no samples;
  • Attempt to claim metals contamination from Texpet operations when in fact the type and level of metals is consistent with naturally occurring levels found in soil.
  • Infer groundwater and surface water contamination without collecting or analyzing water samples.
  • Make false claims about remediation practices and standards used by Texpet;
  • Make false claims about U.S. produced water practices and standards;
  • Make false claims about use of and standards for pit construction in the U.S. and internationally;
  • Make false claims about biodegradation of petroleum;
  • Make misleading claims about gas flaring practices;
  • Fail to follow the court-ordered analytical plan and instead use analytical methods that are known to give inaccurate and unreliable results;
  • Analyze less than half of all the samples they collect;
  • Fail to verify the quality of laboratory results in terms of quality assurance and quality control (which is an established requirement for qualified environmental scientists);
  • Consistently misrepresent the location of pits remediated by Texpet in an effort to assign responsibility to Texpet for areas impacted by Petroecuador's operations and spills;
  • Collect and handle samples in a manner that would preclude their admissibility in U.S. courts; and
  • Use regulatory standards that did not even exist at the time Texpet carried out its remediation program to judge the effectiveness of that program.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have submitted fewer technical reports than Chevron because they have either missed court-ordered deadlines for the delivery of reports, or failed to respond to Court demands that they substantiate claims that laboratory samples needed for their analyses were compromised. In other instances, technical experts nominated by the plaintiffs to conduct sampling and analysis have either quit or been dismissed. Finally, the plaintiffs have changed the laboratory used to analyze their samples, because the original lab at Catholic University in Quito refused to continue to work with them. This raises serious questions about the consistency of their analysis.

Susana Struve, an Ecuadorian biologist and environmental scientist with the global environmental engineering firm CH2M Hill, who is advising Chevron, said, "The reports submitted by the plaintiffs contain so many errors that one must question their validity. In my many years in studying the environment, rarely have I seen such an extreme example of weak technical reporting as is shown in the reports submitted by the plaintiffs."

Chevron's formal evaluations of plaintiffs' reports were submitted to the Superior Court in Nueva Loja.

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