Jagdeo agrees with appeal against ruling on EPA enforcing liability clauses

Although not a party in the action brought against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo confirmed that the government supports appealing the ruling that ordered the agency to be compliant with the liability clauses in ExxonMobil’s permits.

“I am not going to run down the judge,” Jagdeo told a press conference on Thursday. “I think a lot of things were not understood clearly. This decision needs to be appealed by the EPA because it makes the EPA look like it is not doing its work. The EPA is staffed with professionals and it has been doing its work. We have to make sure our institutions don’t act based on economic nationalism or the peripheral noise out there. We are playing in the big leagues now. We are not a backwater country where you can do whatever you want and get away with it. For that reason alone I think the decision should be appealed.