When western oil giants like Shell, Chevron and Texaco set up business in Africa, Asia and Latin America, they've throw their money around to get the cheap labour, lax environmental enforcement and legal immunity from local officials and courts.
But now, things may be changing. A pair of groundbreaking legal cases raises hope that the petro barons may at long last be held to account. Added to this: Nigeria's parliament may be about to approve a $5bn fine against serial polluter Shell for a disastrous spill that affected millions.
Last month, a court in the Hague heard a case against the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell. It was the first time a major Dutch corporation faced trial in a civil court in the Netherlands for damage caused in another country.
Good news, also, from Latin America: after decades of struggle, the people of the Lago Agrio region in Ecuador have just won a huge victory against Chevron, one of the largest oil companies in the world. The US supreme court has decided not to block a judgment from an Ecuadorean court that ordered Chevron to pay $19bn in damages.
This is the culmination of a 20-year legal battle for justice by the indigenous people of Ecuador who say that from 1964 to 1992, Texaco (recently bought by Chevron) illegally dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Ecuadorean rainforest. In what became known as the "Amazon Chernobyl", the pollution decimated over 1,500 sq miles, triggered a spike in cancer rates and destroyed locals' livelihoods and habitats.
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