Well this is interesting, and also misleading if you read it at face value. Texaco did admittedly do an appalling job in Ecuador. The trouble is that they did this nearly thirty years ago when there was just simply not the same amount of environmental awareness that there is today. The muds they used were lignosulphates and chromium was added to enhance temperature stability of the mud.
Those muds have now been banned for decades.
Also in those days, the reserve pits were just simply holes in the ground into which all the cuttings from the well were poured, including whatever mud the shale shakers couldn't get off them , as well as when the clay content of the mud got too high, then the mud was partially dumped and diluted with fresh mud to get the clay down.
Today, all of this is totally outlawed. The oil company environmentalists don't even allow you to consider it.
When I was in Trinidad we bought some old leases in Central Block off another oil company, who had bought them from otheres etc. etc.leases. Pretty much exactly the same thing had been done that was done in Ecuador. The only reason we found out about it was that our environmentalist couldn't find a single thing alive in the stream that ran by the side of the lease. no fish, no molluscs, no shrimp, nothing.
The levels were so high down slope from the old reserve pits that we spent six months of the dry season with a bio-remediation company digging away all of the topsoil, and all of the creek bed (for miles and miles). The contaminated topsoil could not be disposed of anywhere except by pumping it down the annulus of an old well so it was thousands of feet below ground and way below any aquifers etc.
Today, I couldn't say if the stream is back to normal, but there are critters in there again. The two drilling sites have a small gas plant on them, and if you take your chair and sit quietly outside you will see a multitude of birds and small mammals, red howler monkeys, and an unbelievable amount of snakes. There is no where on those two sites that you wouldn't pick up a sandwich if it fell and eat it.
But then we get articles like this that does nobody any good. I personally don't have a clue what is happening today in Ecuador. One set of people will say that the problems have all gone away, and the others will say it is terrible and they want money.
I do know however that oil companies did have very dirty pasts, but those days are generally long gone. Oil companies don't generally do the drilling, nor do they generally provide the mud. They do the planning though, and if they did plan a site that was going to be damaging, then all of the service companies would normally refuse to play along because of the shotgun litigation that follows.
In conclusion, what I am saying is that what happened thirty years ago is not what will happen today. It just won't. Go and take a look at Spanish Lookout and have a look at BNE's development. I personally think it is dreadful, but at least there are no reserve pits left festering, There are not large globs of oil being washed into the many streams. There just isn't the environmental devastation that oil developments used to walk hand in hand with.
AmbergrisCaye.com 
