Brazil holds 17 Chevron & Transocean officials over oil spill: the gap between this and US policy towards oil polluters here

[Emily]

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11461426/3/the-hypocrisy-of-brazils-chevron-oil-spill-example.html

By Eric Rosenbaum 03/19/12 - 03:42 PM EDT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I spent a year living in an apartment that overlooked Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro. It featured the picture postcard view of Sugarloaf Mountain, but another view too: An unending, year-long parade of oil rigs being floated out into the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

As the pre-salt boom in Brazil's offshore oil industry took shape in 2007, I had a front row seat (literally). Local papers like O Globo had some fun with the story, too, as the eye-popping statistics came in on how much oil might be trapped beneath the ocean and Brazil came of sudden age as an oil giant: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez began referring to former Brazilian president Lula as "Sheikh Lula" and an image along those lines appeared in print.

Now the ugly side of the pre-salt Brazilian oil boom has been exposed. The spill that occurred late last year in Chevron's(CVX_) Frade field has resulted in an increasingly hostile battle pitting the oil giant and rig operator Transocean(RIG_) against the Brazilian federal government....

Chevron CEO John Watson quote from the company's last conference call regarding the best defense for an oil major operating in today's regulatory environment post-Macondo disaster:

"Don't put oil in the water."