When Nude Nigerians Attack Chevron Listens

East Bay Express 6aug02

Life just keeps getting worse for the East Bay oil giant ChevronTexaco. The company bought a 26 percent stake in a young natural gas- and energy-trading upstart named Dynegy in 1989, hoping to break into the energy market's next phase early on. Unfortunately, that market proved to be a lot more volatile than the oil execs anticipated, and Dynegy's stock value plummeted as federal and state investigations into its conduct in the electricity crisis cast a pall over the firm ("Market Volatility," June 26).

Now Dynegy's future is even more precarious, as Standard & Poor's cut its debt rating to junk status last week. Seems the company has a liquidity crisis with its $2.2 billion credit line recently expired -- cue the weepy violins, please.

As if that weren't bad enough, ChevronTexaco has encountered complications in its Nigerian oil-drilling arm. On July 17, hundreds of village women occupied at least four of its pipeline stations, shutting down production until the company agreed to hire more local residents and finance local development projects. The villages around the oil facilities are among world's poorest, lacking basics such as running water, even as Nigeria generates an annual $20 billion in oil revenue. Fed up with this disparity, the women -- many as old as eighty -- threatened to use their most potent weapon: stripping themselves naked, a powerful shaming device in the Niger Delta. One would think ChevronTexaco reps wouldn't blink at the sight of Nigerian mammaries. But they caved like a bad saline job, agreeing to front $160,000 in small-business loans and to build hospitals, schools, and electricity grids in the area. And we thought these power-players knew how to play hardball.