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Here's a billion dollar lesson for Chevron...and the other oil giants out there.
In Brasil...it helps to...falar portugues/speak Portuguese.
Outgoing Chevron Rio honcho...George Buck didn't...or perhaps didn't communicate well enough...and it cost his oil company much of its goodwill..and perhaps more than $20 billion...after a small spill...in the Frade field...off Rio's coast.
Chevron's spill was less than 1/1000th of the BP Gulf disaster...with little appreciable environmental damage...but is being pursued in court...with Rio state seeking...$20 billion in damages.
Buck's worst move was holding a press conference announcing the spill...in Rio...in English only.
Was it ignorance? Or arrogance? Or both?
Whatever the case...after months of legal limbo...Buck is being allowed to leave his Brasil post after more than 3 years...after posting a $260,000 bond...and will be replaced with a female Portuguese speaker from Chevron's Angola operations...Kelly Hartshorn.
