News Releases & Statements

May 26, 2008

Report by Court Expert Riddled With Mistakes, Inconsistencies and Unsubstantiated Conclusions

Court should reject report as unreliable and unfairly biased in favor of plaintiffs

Quito, Ecuador, May 26, 2008 - A preliminary analysis of the 60-page report and accompanying appendices submitted by Richard Cabrera to the Superior Court in Nueva Loja, Ecuador concludes that Cabrera's report is riddled with so many mistakes, inconsistencies, unsubstantiated conclusions and transparent bias as to render it fatally flawed and unreliable in evaluating the environmental condition of the Oriente region of Ecuador.

The following are some of the most dramatic examples of the serious flaws of Cabrera's report:

  1. Cabrera concludes that 100 percent of the production stations in the concession area require remediation, yet he collected a only single soil sample at just one station, and he did not detect any hydrocarbons in that sample.
  2. Cabrera did not analyze a single water sample from a drinking water well or from rivers or streams, yet he still claims that Chevron should pay to replace the entire drinking water system for the number of people who will be living in the concession area 20 years from now.
  3. Cabrera's own data, as presented in the appendices, do not support many of his conclusions in the body of his report. For instance, Mr. Cabrera's analysis did not detect any levels of benzene and Chromium VI, known carcinogens that plaintiffs' allege are present in soil and groundwater in the region.
  4. Cabrera presents satellite images of oil well sites to support his conclusion that Texaco Petroleum Company (Texpet) was responsible for all the pits. However, satellite images included in Cabrera's in his report were sometimes taken after Petroecuador assumed total control and operating responsibility for the oil fields, and PE had built new pits. Satellite images of the same sites taken at the time when Texpet was operator of the fields show no such pits.
  5. Cabrera maintains that Chevron should pay $2.9 billion in compensatory damages for 428 "excessive" statistical cancer deaths. However, Cabrera presents no proof — such as medical records of the alleged victims — of the cancer cases. In fact, government cancer mortality statistics (INEC) contradict Mr. Cabrera's survey findings.
  6. Cabrera presents different and conflicting estimates for pit remediation. For instance, in his main report, he claims pit remediation would cost $1.7 billion, but in an appendix, he states that pit remediation would cost $162 million. He never acknowledges that he has different cost estimates nor does he supply any justification for such a wide range of costs. His lower cost estimate is more than 2 times higher than PEPDA's cost for remediation of the same number of pits. (PEPDA is the department of Petroecuador managing the project for the remediation of pits in Ecuador's Amazon Region.)
  7. In his report, Cabrera states "the pits remediated by PEPDA, from the information that I reviewed, show a post-remediation environmental quality index of 90-100%." However, elsewhere in his report he claims that the remediation work now underway by PEPDA is inadequate. Cabrera sampled one pit remediated by PEPDA and that sample met even Cabrera's arbitrary cleanup criteria. He ignores his own data and also ignores the fact that DINAPA, the Ecuadorian environmental agency, has approved PEPDA's pit remediation.
  8. Cabrera acknowledges that the Government of Ecuador deeded land in the Oriente to colonists and indigenous groups, but he then inexplicably suggests that Chevron should buy back 40,000 hectares from farmers to be given to the Cofan and Siona-Secoya indigenous communities. Cabrera ignores the fact that Texpet never owned the land and played no part in the adjudication of land rights.

"The sheer number of flaws, inconsistencies, contradictions, basic math errors and unsubstantiated conclusions in Mr. Cabrera's report sets a new standard for junk science," said Ricardo Reis Veiga, Managing Counsel for Chevron Latin America. "For Mr. Cabrera to arrive at such absurd conclusions suggests he is either grossly incompetent or supremely prejudicial in his opinions. Either way, however, no legitimate court could possibly accept such a flawed report. A complete review of Mr. Cabrera's report and the accompanying appendices, affirms our initial view that this report must be stricken from the Court proceedings, and we will proceed with a detailed rebuttal and petition the court to reject this report."

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