Crude (2009 film) Crude (2009 film) Crude is a 2009 American documentary film directed and produced by Joe Berlinger. It follows a two-year portion of an ongoing class action lawsuit against the Chevron Corporation in Ecuador. The film follows the progress during 2006 and 2007 of a $27 billion legal case brought against the Chevron Corporation following the drilling of the Lago Agrio oil field, a case described by activists as an "Amazon Chernobyl". The plaintiffs of the class action lawsuit are 30,000 Ecuadorians living in the Amazonian rainforest who claim their ancestral homeland has been polluted by the oil industry. In addition
Mining in Ecuador Barron and his company Aurelian discovered a large deposit at Fruta del Norte, estimated to be 10 million ounces of gold and 14 million ounces of silver. Following changes to Ecuadorian mining laws that limited foreign ownership of mining projects, the Canadian company Kinross Gold acquired Aurelian Resources in 2009 and took on the Fruta del Norte project, which is set in the Amazon province of Zamora Chinchipe in southern Ecuador. Described by some as "one of the most exciting gold discoveries of the past 15 years," it has an estimated reserve of 6.8 million ounces of gold and 9.1