1. Should Ecuadorians be able to sue Texaco in U.S. courts?
2. If an oil spill was caused by an act of God, an earthquake, should Texaco be held responsible?
3. Do you find Texaco’s arguments against the lawsuits convincing? Why or why not?

In 1964, at the invitation of the Ecuadorian government, Texaco Inc. began operations through a subsidiary, TexPet, in the Amazon region of Ecuador. The purpose of the project was to “develop Ecuador’s natural resources and encourage the colonization of the area.” TexPet was a minority owner of the project and its partner was Petroecua-dor, the government-owned oil company. Over the years from 1968 to 1992, the consortium extracted 1.4 billion barrels of oil from the Ecuadorian operations.