Thanks for your comment. If you look at the history of petroleum in the Americas, even when local or national companies “own” a share of oil profits (and, therefore, responsibility for human & environmental hazards), they were often backed–overtly or otherwise–by US and European oil interests. In other cases, they merely inherited (or bought out) foreign oil companies’ infrastructure that had already left a trail of problems behind it. So I don’t think that pointing the finger back at PetroEcuador necessarily tells the whole story.

“since Texaco initiated its operations in the Ecuadorean Amazon”

The problem with this letter and this piece is that it wasn’t Texaco (Chevron) that initiated the oil exploration. It was the Nationalized Ecuadorian gas company PetroEcuador. There are two companies involved here. Shared responsibility.

By isolating an attack on one company without acknowledging the other is just as bad as one pointing a finger at another. It’s a shared responsibility.

Let’s look at all the facts and have ALL those involve, including contractors hired by either firm in Ecuador, act socially responsible and clean up the mess and make good to the people. It shouldn’t be only the firm with the deepest pockets.