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A United States federal appeals court ruled on August 8 in favour of the oil giant Chevron in a case that dates back more than 20 years. The ruling blocks an Ecuadorean indigenous community from collecting a judgement of nearly US$8.6 billion for environmental damage to the Amazon rainforest.

It won’t come as a surprise to many readers that Chevron is not the most honest or law-abiding company in the world. In Australia, , while the Maritime Union of Australia has repeatedly protested the company’s exploitation of immigrant labour.

Oil giant Chevron Corp is fighting to avoid paying compensation awarded to about 30,000 Ecuadorean citizens severely affected by the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon.

The huge multinational US oil corporation Texaco operated in Ecuador from 1964 until 1992 (Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001). The corporation poured 72 billion litres of oil waste and 45 million litres of crude oil over 2 million hectares of land in Santa Elena province — land which included the Amazon rainforest, rivers and agricultural land. Texaco just poured the oil into ground-connected pipes which just poured oil directly into the rivers and forests.