28 Apr 2006

Expert Testifies at Sacha Norte Site Inspection; Says Chevron's Sampling and Analysis Plan is Appropriate to Evaluate Former Operations

Testimony Refutes Claims by Plaintiffs' Consultants

QUITO, Ecuador, April 28, 2006 – An expert in environmental engineering has told the Superior Court of Nueva Loja that Chevron's testing procedures are accurate and appropriate for the scope of judicial inspection process that is underway.

At the judicial inspection of the Sacha Norte oil site on April 26, Dr. Pedro J. Alvarez presented written testimony that pointed out the serious flaws in the work of consultants hired by the plaintiffs, and told the Court that the sampling and analysis plan in use by Chevron's technical experts is absolutely appropriate for determining whether Texaco Petroleum Company complied with its remediation obligations, and whether residents living in the vicinity of these sites are being exposed to harmful concentrations of contaminants associated with the areas remediated by Texaco.

In August 2004 the Superior Court accepted a sampling and analysis plan jointly developed and submitted to the Court by Chevron and the plaintiffs. That plan is to be used for each of the oil sites inspected by the Court. However, the plaintiffs have subsequently failed to follow the plan they developed and submitted for the collection and laboratory analysis of water and soil samples.

In his written testimony, Alvarez commented on the report submitted by the plaintiffs' consultants: "The serious allegations by Maest et al. in their report dated 8 March 2006, that the sampling program that Chevron's appointed experts are conducting deliberately hides or minimizes the existing contamination and associated risks, is not supported by factual information contained in their report or by any published information I have been able to review to date, or any facts that I have witnessed."

Dr. Alvarez provided further evaluation on report by the plaintiffs' consultant. Specifically Dr. Alvarez stated:
"The opinion of Maest et al., expressed in their report titled 'How Chevron's Sampling and Analysis Methods Minimizes Evidence of Contamination', may be precipitous. To my knowledge, they did not attend judicial inspections or observed the sampling efforts prior to submitting their report. Furthermore, it is possible that they

  • may have understood that the scope of the judicial inspection sampling efforts was different,
  • may have not have completed a systematic evaluation of the enormous compilation of documents the describe the sampling and analysis agreements, procedures and results (the vast majority of which were written in Spanish),
  • may have been misinformed about the sampling procedures used and oversight provided during the judicial inspections, and and/or
  • may be unaware of the existence of areas that do not fall under the responsibility of Texpet (e.g., sites and pits that are not part of the RAP, pits still in use by Petroecuador, oil spills that occurred after 1990, etc.)."

Pedro J. Alvarez, Ph.D., is currently a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University in Houston. Previously, he was professor in the University of Iowa. He received his doctorate from the University of Michigan.

The full text of Dr. Alvarez's testimony can be found at:

http://www.texaco.com/sitelets/ecuador/docs/2006-04-28_alvarez_en.pdf (PDF, 94KB)

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