The mistreatment of locals in oil rich countries by rich oil companies is nothing new. We all know about the collusion that goes on between oil companies and despotic and corrupt governments all over the world, especially in Africa. It's been covered for years. But most of us turn a blind eye to it all, as facing such atrocities head on would paralyze us. Filling your gas tank would be a serious moral dilemma, as would doing nearly everything from buying milk (it got there on a oil-fueled truck) to taking a flight for work or vacation. No, it has been much easier to run from our dependence on often blood-stained oil than to responsibly deal with it.
And the oil companies, to their credit, have helped us keep up the fallacy. With bright, friendly logos and convincing PR tactics, they've built up a façade that we have no interest in questioning, lest we question our entire society and how it's literally run.
But sometimes the oil companies overplay their hands and the façade slips, and we're forced to wake up, if only for a minute, from our delusionary dreams.
Today's Los Angeles Times reports that Chevron Corp., one of the world's largest non-government oil companies, is seeking nearly $500,000 in legal costs from Nigerian villagers who had brought a human-rights lawsuit against them and lost. The villagers had sought to hold Chevron responsible for a 1998 incident in which protesters and the Nigerian government clashed over an oil platform, leaving two protesters dead and more wounded. Chevron won, the villagers lost, and therefore I guess, we, the people, both won and lost.
But that's not the issue at hand. Rather, it's Chevron's over-the-top and unnecessarily cruel eye poking that should have people everywhere outraged. That the company, which posted "a record $23.8-billion profit for 2008," actually expects a group of poor Nigerian villagers to pay them an essentially unfathomable amount of money is obscene. As Laura Livoti, founder of Bay Area-based Justice in Nigeria Now, puts it in the article, Chevron is attempting to squeeze "nearly half a million dollars out of poor villagers who don't even have access to clean drinking water."
To add insult to injury, the villagers Chevron is seeking reimbursement from include a protestor who was shot and wounded, another who was arrested and tortured, at least a dozen children, and thirty former plaintiffs who dropped out of the case before it went to trial.
Just what is Chevron trying to prove with these actions? Do they really need the money, which includes $190,000 in photocopying charges, and that accounts for less than a rounding error for the company?
Decidedly not.
Chevron must know they'll never see this money -- hell, the villagers would never see this money if they worked fifty lifetimes. But the company is sending a message to protesters and activists around the world: "Don't fuck with us."
As if they weren't already concerned for their lives and safety, you better bet poor villagers in Africa or Indonesia or South America, and their lawyers here, are now going to think twice as hard about taking on oil companies and the like in the court of law.
And while the oil companies win again, and the villagers lose again, there's no split decision for us, the people. No matter what the savings at the pump or in the market, the silencing of protesters and the destruction of their environments and lives is as great a loss for us as it is for them. We just don't know it yet.