To Christian's points, the Amazon Defense Coalition acknowledges Petroecuador's contributions to the contamination.  Chevron has every right to file a lawsuit against Petroecuador for damages. Legal precedent, though, holds that the original creator of the pollution remains responsible. Let's be clear that the contamination was rampant BEFORE Petroecuador began its operations and when Texaco left. The question of whether Texaco was "pushed out" is not relevant. Texaco violated Ecuadorian law by dumping toxins to begin with and then further violated the law by falsely claiming it had cleaned up some of the oil pits when it did not. People are sick and dying, and Chevron should be held accountable for what Texaco did.

Just because people are sick and dying does not equate to Chevron having to pay. People are sick and dying all the time due to one reason or another. Let's start a list shall we, cell phone radiation, hormones in animals, genetically modified foods...  The list goes on and on and on.

Let's start with the first issue: (BTW I would like to point out that I have relatives who live in Ecuador, and I have had my father die on what we think was cell phone radiation.)

What was the legal law present at the time of the deeds. Because if you are going to hold a company liable then you have to look at the laws of the time. This gets very complicated since at the time Ecuador was a mess in terms of legal and law. Ecuador is not one of the most corrupt nations on the planet for nothing.

If the laws at the time did not forbid Texaco from doing what they did, then things become more complicated. What has to be proven is that at the time of action Texaco did things that they could have avoided. On this there is some legal footing since Texaco was not doing the same thing in Ecuador as they were doing in other places.

Legal precedent I think in this cannot hold since you have to ask yourself what laws were in place? Ecuador? Then all Chevron would have to say is, "bugger you I am not there." America? Ah, but then comes the problems of international and the fact that Ecuador is a mess in terms of law.  International court is a joke so let's not even start there.

Texaco was pushed out, and anybody who says otherwise is doing revisionist history. And the fact that they were pushed out is relevant because what Chevron can argue is that they clean up was cut short. After all they did clean up. Now you might say they did not do it good enough. Fair enough, but you have to go back to the times of the act and ask yourself what were the local conditions. All Chevron has to say is, "we were kicked out and to the best of our abilities we tried to be safe and cleaned up..."

I am not trying to say Chevron is innocent. What I am saying is that this tack is fool hardy. The lawsuit should have attacked both Chevron and PetroEcuador. Because the real problem is that you have to go back and establish what the problems were. That is problematic because you are going to have to prove intent, intent that Texaco wanted to harm people.

If I were Correa, I would have done the following:

Let foreign companies come back in and make investments.
Get companies to help clean up the mess. I would have taken the tack and said, "I know things back then were funny, but that was then, this is now." People are dying, getting sick and we need to move on, move forward.
Take a smaller slice in the royalties in return for acting responsibly.

I actually see a much bigger problem. With Correa defaulting, and scaring foreign capital, there will be more home brewed messes.

Recalling from solar resource maps, the inland of Ecuador (eg around the capital Quito) and other areas (near the westernmost coast eg Paita and Talara for solar thermal with cheap ocean once through cooling) has really good solar resources, and very stable seasonal output due to being very close to the equator.

Are you hearing me, Ecuador? Solarize!