Unocal

History

The Union Oil Company of California was founded by Lyman Stewart, Wallace Hardiman, and Thomas Bard on October 17th, 1890 and headquartered in Santa Paula, a hundred miles northwest of Los Angeles. This orginal building is now the California Oil Museum. Stewart and Hardiman had met in the Pennsylvania oil fields and moved out west in the 1880's to follow the potentials that state promised. In 1890, they merged their holdings with that of Bard, a west coast business man, who shared with them the awareness of the futures of oil. By 1913, Stewart, last of the three left, opened up Union Oil's first service station at Sixth and Mateo in downtown LA. By 1925, they had over four hundred stations. During the Great Depression they invented and released 76 Gasoline and Triton motor oil which helped motorists get better performance from their automobiles. As the war in Europe was beginning, the company took on former steel man Reese Taylor, who increased prospect, production and refining to support the Allied effort. After the war they were able to branch out, making natural gas discoveries in Alaska, the first oil discoveries in Australia, leading the charge in offshore oil-drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. They created a strong chemical company and developed a revolutionary refining technology, Unicracking, which became widely used around the world. In 1965 they merged with The Pure Oil Company of Illinois which gave them national status and operations in thirty-seven states. They continued their operations in Alaska, finding oil to match their gas discoveries, and in the Gulf of Mexico finding gas to match their oil. They discovered the Attaka Oil Fields offshore of Indonesia, set up operations in the often turbulent North Sea, and they discovered commercial gas reserves in the Gulf of Thailand. They have also been an international leader in Geothermic Energy. In 1983, Union Oil Company of California became an operating subsidiary of a new holdings company named Unocal, who's name they took on in 1985. In the 1990's, under the guidance of long time leader Fred Hartley, Dick Stegemeier, and new CEO Roger C. Beach, Unocal became the largest independent oil and gas producers, with new prospects opening up in Gabon, Brazil, Bangledesh, Afghanistan and their favorite spot, the Gulf of Mexico.[1]

However

Becoming one of the major leaders in gas and oil production does not happen from handing flowers out in the local town square. Nor does it happen from politely asking native populations to abandon their homes and toil exponentially in a vast industrial project that has nothing to do with their lives. Unocal, in advancing along the path of success, in fact becoming one of the oldest industrial companies in the top 100 of their field, has allowed, abetted, possibly encouraged and significantly benefitted from practices by countries that use tactics of war to greaten the profit margin of projects that will yield access to large amounts of natural reserves on land that is not theirs, through partnerships with governments that obtained power via undemocratic means.

Burma

Late in 1996 a lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles District Court, Doe v Unocal cv-96-6959 RAP, which sought reparations for Unocal 's complicity in the Myanmar regime's behavior in areas relevant to a pipeline that is under construction. Unocal is not the only company involved with this project, known as the Yadana Natural Gas Pipeline Project. A French oil company, Total has a 31.24% investment in the project, the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT) has a 25.5% stake in it, the Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) has a 15% cut in the deal. Unocal has the remaining 28.26%. Even Halliburton got involved when its joint venture with Saipem of Italy, European Marine Services installed the necessary 365 kilometer offshore portion of the pipeline.[2] The lawsuit alleged a series of crimes committed by the Myanmar paramilitary and intelligence organization, SLORC, (which stands for the State Law & Order Restoration Council). MOGE is not seperate from the Myanmar regime and directly benefits from the violent actions of SLORC. In fact, everyone involved in the Yadana Pipeline Project benefits from the violent displacement, forced labor, rape and forced prostitution, death and destruction of local towns that has occured by the hand of SLORC to minimize costs and communications and to maximize profit and control of the resources being made available. The plaintiffs have claimed as much in the suit, which relies on the Alien Tort Claims Act, a 1789 law that grants federal jurisdiction to crimes of torture and the such comitted on foreign soil, even by foreigners, if they can be served on U.S. soil. The ATCA has been seen as the last resort to responding to corporations' wide range of abuses across the planet. In 1997, the federal court in LA decided to hear the case and ruled that corporations and their executive officers can be held legally responsible under the ATCA for crimes against humanity. After three years of discovery, the court said

• "Unocal knew that the military had a record of committing human rights abuses; that the Project hired the military to provide security for the Project, a military that forced villagers to work and entire villages to relocate for the benefit of the project; that the military , while forcing villagers to work and relocate, committed numerous acts of violence; and that Unocal knew or should have known that the military did committ, was committing and would continue to committ these tortious acts"
• "[E]vidence does suggest that Unocal knew that forced labor was being utilized and that [Unocal and Total, a co-founder in the Yadana project] benefited from the practice."
• "The violence perpetrated against Plaintiffs is well documented in the deposition testimony under seal with the Court."

Despite all this, the Court dismissed the case because the Plaintiffs had not shown that Unocal wanted the military to committ these abuses. The Plaintiffs appealed the decision and on September 18, 2002, a three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the lower court's ruling, stating the Plaintiffs only had to show that Unocal knowingly assisted the military, and determined the Plaintiffs could procede with trial. This was challenged and in Febuary of 2003, the decision was to be left to a panel of eleven judges.The Department of Justice entered a brief on behalf on Unocal in opposition to the use of the ATCA for reasons like this.[3]

external links

• http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/corporate_accountability/corporate_accountability.asp
• http://www.earthrights.org/