Chevron’s Moral Dilemma
by Ben Gardiner ~ November 14th, 2012. Filed under: Uncategorized.
Nearly 20 years after a lawsuit was filed against Texaco for vast environmental damage and health issues caused by oil drilling in the Amazing Basin, their parent company Chevron is facing a resurgence of legal problems which aim to reciprocate the local Ecuadoreans. The latest news features an attempt by the plaintiffs to seize assets of Chevron Canada, claiming that a “subsidiary [company]’s assets can be seized to satisfy the [legal] judgment.”
Chevron denies responsibility for the environmental disaster stating that “Texaco’s practices were substandard, they were accepted and legal in the country at the time. If there is a mess yet to be cleaned up, it is the fault of the Ecuadorean government.”
While a bona fide case can be made against the parent company Chevron USA, I believe a claim to seize assets of Chevron Canada is a last-ditch effort by the plaintiff to make legal gains from a previous disaster. However, Chevron should still find itself in a tough moral position: do they attempt to repair (or, at least, reciprocate for) the health and environmental issues that Texaco created so many years ago or does this oppose a profitable model for oil businesses? Although I believe oil companies have a moral responsible to the free market to be accountable for social and environmental problems they create, I worry that corporate lobbying and pandering to government may unfairly influence legal decisions in favour of large corporations, overruling moral decision-making.
Read more on Texaco: The Texas Company
Read more on Chevron: Human Energy