Last night I went down to the Muenzinger Auditorium at CU to check out the latest movie playing in the International Film Series.  Crude is a documentary that deals with a class action lawsuit filed against Chevron/Texaco by 30,000 Ecuadorian natives.  The film examines the suffering that the alleged pollution of Chevron/Texaco has caused in the Ecuadorian Amazon. It also looks at the struggle of the Ecuadorian and American lawyers with limited funds, fighting a multi-billion dollar company with unlimited resources. The plaintiffs alleged that Texaco dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste-water, spilled roughly 17 million gallons of crude oil, and left open pits of toxic waste throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon.  While Chevron/Texaco naturally denies any wrong doing, and blames the problems on Petroecuador the state owned oil company of Ecuador.

The movie does a great job of showing how hard it is for anyone to fight a multinational company, no matter how dedicated you are, and how obvious it is that the multinational (Chevron/Texaco) is wrong.  The way in which the director interlaced segments from the actual trial, with interviews from Chevron/Texaco lawyers, and health experts does an outstanding job in proving all of their statements false.   One of Chevron/Texaco’s health experts maintains that Chevron has sampled water flowing from pits like the one pictured below, and they have all come back with acceptable levels of contaminates.    I don’t know about you, but I personally would not want to drink water from a pit with oil floating on top of it.

Open waste pit left by Texaco

I think that the movie accomplished exactly what it intended to, which is to show what Texaco did in Ecuador to the world.  The movie does not directly villinize Chevron/Texaco, but lets the company do it for itself with the interviews and segments from the trail.  If you get a chance to check out the movie I would recommend it, you will walk away feeling disgusted, and disappointed with big business, but maybe it will inspire you to make change.

Overall Rating A-