Old Texaco barrels left on the banks of the Aguarico River near Lago Agrio. Photo: Kayana Szymczak

Strictly speaking, the cost of oil can indeed be measured in dollars and cents—$50 per barrel, $2.20 per gallon. But how do you put a price on more than 1,400 lives lost due to the irresponsible operations of a multinational oil corporation? What is the price tag for the complete devastation of one of the most pristine rain forest regions in the world?

Joe Berlinger’s Crude, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, is a cinéma-vérité look at the $27 billion legal battle between ChevronTexaco and the 30,000 indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon province of Succumbios. Berlinger strives for journalistic objectivity in the film by documenting both the story of the Ecuadorians and that of the oil company. “Some people will come away thinking the oil companies are right,” he told the New York Times.

Plaintiffs claim that the amount of toxic material dumped in the region during Texaco’s operations from 1964 to 1992 is 30 times greater than that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Experts estimate that it will cost approximately $6 billion to clean up the area.

An Associated Press story (via HuffPost) from December of last year details the catastrophic contamination of the rain forest region, perhaps one of the largest environmental disasters to date worldwide. ChevronTexaco maintains that a 1998 agreement with the Ecuadorian government, after spending $40 million on remediation, clears it of responsibility for any further damages.

The documentary, which recently won the Big Sky Documentary Festival award for Best Editing, speaks to larger issues such as the aftermath of a corporation’s multinational endeavors going largely unregulated, human rights activism and the power of celebrity. A write up in the NYT states “…the movie makes clear that while it’s easy to laugh at celebrity do-gooders, they have access to real power unavailable to the merely mortal.”

Check out the Now Playing section of the film’s website for upcoming showings. Siding with the Ecuadorians? Find ways to takepart in their struggle for justice on the Clean Up Ecuador website.