Corruption in Ecuador accused Ecuador of violating the due process of 27 Supreme Court justices dismissed by Congress in 2004. In 2015, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) stated that “judicial independence is seriously compromised” in Ecuador. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in 2014 that an $18 billion pollution judgment against Chevron by an Ecuadoran court in 2011 had been the product of corruption. Attorney Steven Donziger and his legal team, according to Kaplan, had “used bribery, fraud and extortion” to win the case for his clients, a group of Ecuadoran villagers. Evidence showed that the ruling issued by Ecuadoran judge Nicolas Zambrano
History of the oil shale industry in the United States supply, and proximity to markets. At the beginning of 1923, a retort was reported to be making test runs on local Sunbury Shale in Pike County, Ohio, and another southern Ohio oil shale retort was being planned. The high price of petroleum encouraged intensified exploration in the US and elsewhere, and eventually resulted in the discovery of large new petroleum deposits. American oil production surged in the early 1920s, particularly in north Texas and the Los Angeles Basin in California, driving down both imports and the price of oil. A barrel of oil in the Midcontinent region lost almost two-thirds