It hasn't won the merest fraction of the coverage enjoyed by the London Olympics, but last week's massive Chevron oil refinery fire in Richmond, Calif., sent hundreds of people rushing to hospitals, darkened the skies over East Bay, and has gasoline prices headed back up towards $4 a gallon. AP notes this "was just the latest pollution incident at the facility that records show has increasingly violated air quality rules over the past five years. The refinery is one of three such facilities near San Francisco that rank among the state's top 10 emitters of toxic chemicals, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory. Chevron's Richmond refinery...has been cited by San Francisco Bay area regulators for violating air regulations 93 times in the past five years."

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan on Jan. 26 overturned an injunction won by Chevon Corporation to block enforcement of what the US oil company claims is a fraudulent, multibillion-dollar judgment in Ecuador for polluting the Amazon rainforest. In reversing the decision made by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Second Circuit held that Chevron may not challenge the approximately $18 billion Ecuadoran judgment before enforcement of that judgment has actually been sought by the Ecuadoran plaintiffs. In its interpretation of the Uniform Foreign Money-Judgments Recognition Act, the court concluded that judgment-debtors like Chevron can challenge a foreign judgment's validity under the Act only defensively and in response to an attempted enforcement. The court found that an effort of enforcement by the Ecuadoran plaintiffs had not yet been undertaken anywhere, and might never be undertaken in New York. While both Chevron and the Ecuadorian plaintiffs have yet to comment on the decision, Chevron has long contended (press release, PDF) that it has never conducted oil operations in Ecuador and that the allegations of environmental and social harm in the Amazon are therefore false.