A U.S. District Court judge in the Southern District of New York has stopped arbitration proceedings against Ecuadorean state-owned oil company Petroecuador by Chevron Corp.….Judge Leonard Sand granted a request by Ecuador and Petroecuador for a permanent injunction of proceedings...The court dispute centers on whether Chevron or Ecuador should pay for any eventual environmental clean-up in the Amazon region, where indigenous groups say oil drilling by Chevron decades earlier had damaged the land….In a statement, Chevron said it was "disappointed"...but is "confident that Petroecuador and the Republic of Ecuador will be compelled to fulfill their obligations…"