Ecuador’s private heavy crude pipeline bursts in Amazon region

Ecuador’s privately held heavy crude pipeline burst on Friday and technical staff are at the scene working to contain the damage, crude transport company OCP Ecuador said. The incident happened in the so-called Piedra Fina zone, an area in Ecuador’s Amazon where regressive erosion caused the OCP pipeline and the state-owned SOTE pipeline to halt

9 Democrats urge DOJ to free lawyer who won lawsuit against Chevron

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and seven other House Democrats are urging the Justice Department to release American environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who helped Indigenous communities in Ecuador win a $9.5 billion lawsuit against Chevron. Why it matters: Human rights groups say the charges against Donziger, who is serving a six-month prison term for contempt of

Lawyer Who Sued Chevron over “Amazon Chernobyl” Ordered to Prison After 800+ Days of House Arrest – Democracy Now!

The environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger joins us just before he is ordered to report to jail today, after a years-long legal battle with the oil company Chevron and 813 days of house arrest. In 2011, Donziger won an $18 billion settlement against Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Indigenous people in Ecuador for

Dozens arrested as Indigenous people lead mass Ecuador protests

Demonstrators are unhappy at the economic policies of the country’s conservative president and want fuel price hikes reversed. As dawn broke in the early hours of October 26, Ecuador’s Indigenous communities had already started the most recent “paro nacional”, or national shutdown in English, by bringing main transit arteries to a halt in the countryside

Ecuadorean indigenous communities sue to halt oil development

Indigenous communities from Ecuador’s Amazon on Monday (Oct 18) sued the government to halt plans by President Guillermo Lasso to increase oil development in the country, calling the expansion efforts a “policy of death. Lasso, a conservative ex-banker who took office in May, issued two decrees in the first days of his administration meant to

Ecuador indigenous party wins National Assembly presidency, backed by Lasso

Ecuador’s National Assembly on Saturday evening elected a representative of the Pachakutik indigenous political party as its president for the next two years, with the support of allies of conservative President-elect Guillermo Lasso. Lawmaker Guadalupe Llori won the National Assembly presidency with 71 votes in the 137-seat chamber. She previously served as a local official