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
Economic history of Ecuador 50 percent of the central government's revenues. In 1985 Ecuador earned over US$1.8 billion in revenue from petroleum exports, two-thirds of Ecuador's export revenue that year. But a sharp decline in international oil prices in 1986 resulted in a US$1.1-billion drop in petroleum export revenue. The balance-of-payments current account, which registered a surplus of US$149 million in 1985, showed a US$613-million deficit for 1986. Foreign-exchange reserves declined to US$145 million by mid-1986, and real GDP growth for 1986 came to only 1.7 percent, compared with 3.8 percent in 1985. To meet the economic crisis, in January 1987 the government suspended