16 yrs. after Valdez oil spill, no money for Alaskans- $5 billion due

[donsu]

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/22260/

The True Price of Oil

Sixteen years after the Exxon Valdez spill, the Alaskans most affected by the spill haven't seen one cent of a $5 billion settlement.

Shortly after the catastrophic 1989 Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Exxon sent Don Cornett, the company's top official in Alaska at the time, to the fishing port of Cordova to reassure the fishers that the company would make things right.

"You have my word," Cornett told them then. "I said it, Don Cornett. We will do whatever it takes to keep you whole. We do business straight."

-snip-

The story of Cordova is not just a sad tale of a few bad fishing seasons. It is the story of how corporations that are, in the words of Brian O'Neill, "nation-states unto themselves", can use the legal system and the seeming apathy of the federal government to bring an entire town to its knees through endless litigation funded by bottomless resources. Cordova, a beautiful but gritty fishing port of 2600, was once a town of high-liners, a term reserved for the most successful commercial fishers, men and women who might have brought in a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, if not more. Today, people in Cordova will tell you there isn't a single fisher in town who would be considered a high-liner by pre-spill standards. Once an exuberant, successful port town filled with old families and big money, Cordova is now a depressed small town where former high-liners mend nets in cannery warehouses and bartenders fill and re-fill beer glasses. If the herring fishery had been closed one, maybe even two seasons, fishers say, they might have been able to bounce back; but there hasn't been a herring season for more than ten years. It has also been ten years since a federal jury awarded the fishers and Natives on the Sound $5.2 billion in punitive damages from Exxon. And it has been ten years that not a single check from that award has been cut. Yet the story of Cordova is not important simply because of the details of the Exxon case; what is at stake in this unprecedented litigation are the concept of corporate responsibility and the way the U.S. legal system can be used by large companies to avoid it.
-snip-
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however:

The Alaska Daily News reported that Exxon's delays are paying off handsomely. While awaiting a final judicial decision, Exxon has earned enough in interest alone to pay the initial five billion award.


america is a crime scene


EXXONMOBIL TO PAY $30 MLN TO AZERBAIJAN TO TERMINATE OIL PROJECT

http://www.azertag.com/en/index.shtml?language=english&catid=&news_year=&news_month=&news_day=&newsid=120423&themes_viewing=&themes_page=&themeid=&news_page=


ExxonMobil will pay $30 mln. to the Azerbaijani state as compensation for its abandonment of the Nakhchivan offshore oil project, said Natig Aliyev, president of the national oil company SOCAR.

The US company signed an agreement with SOCAR in 1997 to develop the project, with each party receiving a 50 pct share in the development.

But after drilling an initial exploratory well at a cost of $80 mln, Exxon concluded that the project was not commercially viable, although SOCAR insisted on the drilling of a second well as specified in the initial agreement.

Aliyev added that the two parties had agreed on the sum and that the process of legally terminating the project was underway.
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[Raster]

1. corporations truly are nation-states with immortal personhood status...

poor Alaska, believing exxon would stand up to their legal and moral responsibilities. Sorry, that wouldn't benefit the shareholders. After all, the MOST PROFITABLE CORPORATION ON THE PLANET has other priorities, and paying for its mistakes is not high on the list. exxon was only on the spot while the televising cameras were rolling and congress at least gave the impression it worked for the people. Now that exxon OWNS the White House and its the current occupant(s), and finances the g.o.p., don't expect anything more. They have more pressing agendas, like stealing oil wealth from other countries.