ChevronTexaco Rejects Green Measures, Cuts Off Environment Discussion

"ChevronTexaco shareholders at their annual meeting Wednesday rejected two proposals questioning the company's treatment of the environment, before the session ended in a verbal clash between an activist and the firm's top executive. Shareholders turned down a measure asking the oil giant to study how drilling could damage fragile ecosystems, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They also voted against spending more to clean up a stretch of the Amazon rain forest where Texaco once worked before its 2001 merger with Chevron.

Both measures failed by roughly the same margin, with 91 percent of shareholders voting against them in preliminary results. Last year, a similar motion on Ecuador also garnered 9 percent of the vote.

"By nature, heavy industry will pollute the environment," said Ralph Hoffmann, 62, of Danville, a shareholder and former Chevron employee who voted against both measures. "ChevronTexaco does a highly commendable job of minimizing its impact on the environment. It's probably one of the best."

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O'Reilly also insisted that Texaco had fulfilled its responsibility to clean up pollution in the Ecuadoran Amazon, near oil wells still being operated by a local oil firm. Although his company has been sued in Ecuador, he said tests conducted for the suit "reveal no harmful levels of oil-related contaminants, either in soil or drinking-water samples." Those tests have become a subject of bitter disagreement between environmentalists and the company, and the dispute over them helped end Wednesday's meeting. During a question-and-answer session with the audience, O'Reilly took several questions related to Ecuador, then said he wouldn't field any more, saying Ecuador had crowded out other topics. When a member of the San Francisco nonprofit Amazon Watch tried to read a letter critical of ChevronTexaco's comments about soil and water tests, O'Reilly first had her microphone cut off, then abruptly closed the meeting."

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/28/BUGVJCGHGJ1.DTL&type=business

For when the revolution comes.

they are doing nothing but "smoke and mirros" on hydrogen infrastructure. Even phonier teh GM's EV and fuel cell smoke and mirros charades.

I've been to their lab in the SF Bay Area (lots of colleagues there) - and, like nothing is happening in hydrogen infrastructure.