Chevron vs. the Amazon: Public Lecture by Associate Professor Dr. John Minns

Presented by The Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies (ANCLAS) and the Embassy of Ecuador in Australia

By Dr. John Minns, Gas Prices
13 October 2017

In June this year the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the oil company Chevron and against 30,000 Ecuadorians who claimed that Texaco – later acquired by Chevron - had caused massive environmental damage in oil production between the early 1970s and 1993 in the Lago Agrio field in northeast Ecuador.

The Ecuadorians have argued since then that the attempt to clean up the oil fields had been unsuccessful and that many in the region had suffered major health problems as a result.

This talk looks at the legacy of oil production in the region and examines the political economy of oil in Ecuador, the environmental problems frequently caused and the difficulties raised by asymmetrical power relations between developing countries and first-world corporations.

About the speaker:

Dr John Minns is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the ANU. He is a former Director of the Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies and a former President of the Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia. He has won many awards for teaching and public policy including the Prime Minister's Award for Australian University Teacher of the Year. In 2017 he was appointed an ANU Distinguished Educator. He is engaged in research on the political economy of oil in Ecuador.