Chevron Corporation

Chevron Corporation
Corporate Information
Name	Chevron Corporation
Abbreviation
Former name	Pacific Coast Oil Co. (1879–1906) Standard Oil of California (1906–1984)
Founded	1879-09-10, as Pacific Coast Oil Co.
Type	Private (1876–1906) Subsidiary (1906–1911) Public company
Traded as	NYSE:  CVX
ISIN	US1667641005
Parents	Standard Oil Co. (1900-1911)
Headquarters	San Ramon, California, U.S.A.
Areas served	Global
Industry	Energy:  Oil and gas
Chairman & CEO	Michael Wirth
Description
Known for / Controversies	Punitive persecution of Steven Donziger Environmental damage in Ecuador Oil spills in Angola U.S. Clean Air Act settlements NiMH battery technology for automobiles Niger Delta shootings UN sanctions Richmond, California refinery Oil spill off the coast of Rio de Janeiro KS Endeavor explosion Forest Fire in Lawachara National Park, Bangladesh Polish gas exploration Argentina agreement and protests Public Eye Lifetime Award Global warming
Subsidiaries	Chevron Phillips Chemical LLC Chevron Lubricants Lanka plc
Brands	Caltex Chevron Texaco Calso (1946–55) Gulf (1985–2010)
Products	Gasoline, natural gas and other petrochemicals (see Chevron products)
Revenue	US$94.4 billion (2020)
Operating income	(US$7.45 billion) (2020; loss)
Net income	(US$5.54 billion) (2020; loss)
Total assets	US$239.8 billion (2020; increase)
Total equity	US$132.7 billion (2020; decrease)
No. of employees	42,628 (2020-12)
Website	Chevron.com

Background

Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. It was founded in 1984 and is the third largest oil company in America. One of the successor companies of Standard Oil, it is headquartered in San Ramon, California, and active in more than 180 countries. Chevron is engaged in every aspect of the oil and natural gas industries, including hydrocarbon exploration and production;   refining, marketing and transport; chemicals manufacturing and sales; and power generation. Chevron is one of the world's largest companies; as of March 2020, it ranked fifteenth in the Fortune 500 with a yearly revenue of $146.5 billion and market valuation of $136 billion. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Chevron was ranked as the 61st-largest public company in the world. It was also one of the Seven Sisters that dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s.

Chevron's downstream operations manufacture and sell products such as fuels, lubricants, additives, and petrochemicals. The company's most significant areas of operations are the west coast of North America, the U.S. Gulf Coast, Southeast Asia, South Korea and Australia. In 2018, the company produced an average of 791,000 barrels of net oil-equivalent per day in United States.

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Controversies

Texaco: Environmental Damage in Ecuador

and Gulf Oil began operating in the Oriente region of Ecuador in 1964 as a consortium. Texaco operated the Lago Agrio oil field from 1972 to 1993 and the Ecuador state oil company continued to operate the same oil fields after Texaco left. In 1993, Texaco was found responsible for dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste and they spent $40m cleaning up the area during the 1990s. In 1998, the Ecuadorean government signed an agreement with Texaco accepting the clean-up as complete and absolving Texaco of any further responsibility. That same year, an Ecuadorean scientific team took water and soil samples after Texaco left and found petroleum hydrocarbons at unsafe levels in almost half. The clean up was called "a sham" by critics.

In 2003, a class action lawsuit against Chevron was filed in Ecuadorian court for $28 billion by indigenous residents, who accused Texaco of making residents ill and damaging forests and rivers by discharging 18 billion US gallons (68,000,000 m3) of formation water into the Amazon rainforest without any environmental remediation. Chevron said that the company had completed cleanup of the pollution caused by Texaco, that current pollution was the result of activities of the Ecuadorian oil interests, and that the 1998 agreements with the Ecuadorian Government exempted the company from any liabilities.

In 2011, Ecuadorian residents were awarded $8.6 billion, based on claims of loss of crops and farm animals as well as increased local cancer rates. The plaintiffs said this would not be enough to make up for the damage caused by the oil company. The award was later revised to $19 billion on appeals, which was then appealed again to the Ecuadorean National Court of Justice. The action has been called the first time that indigenous people have successfully sued a multinational corporation in the country where the pollution took place.

Chevron described the lawsuit as an "extortion scheme" and refused to pay the fine.

In November 2013, the international arbitration tribunal issued a partial award in favor of Chevron and its subsidiary, Texaco Petroleum Company. The tribunal has found Chevron is not liable for environmental claims in Ecuador.

In March 2014, United States district court judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that the Ecuadorian plaintiff's lead attorney, Steven Donziger, had used "corrupt means," including "coercion, bribery, money laundering and other misconduct," to obtain the 2011 court verdict in Ecuador. The judge did not rule on the underlying issue of environmental damages. While the US ruling does not affect the decision of the court in Ecuador, it has blocked efforts to collect damages from Chevron in US courts. Donziger appealed. The appeals court ruled against Donziger because of his "egregious" misconduct, witness tampering, and judicial coercion and bribery, therefore reaffirming Donziger's disbarment. Some media later alleged that Chevron had paid a key witness in the case hundreds of thousands of dollars for his testimony, which he later admitted to have been false.

In April 2015, Amazon Watch released videos reportedly sent from a whistleblower inside Chevron. The videos purportedly show employees and consultants finding petroleum contamination at sites in the Ecuadorean Amazon that the company claimed was cleaned up years earlier. These videos were confirmed as legitimate by Chevron legal counsel. According to the company, the videos show routine testing to establish the perimeter of oil pits. The company further stated that it is not possible to determine from the videos whether the sites shown are the responsibility of Chevron or its former partner, Petroecuador. According to Amazon Watch, the videos contain a map confirming that the sites are Chevron's, and contain footage of interviews with villagers known to live in the area for which Chevron is responsible.

In September 2018, an international tribunal ruled in favor of Chevron Corp finding that Ecuador had violated its obligations under international treaties. The tribunal held that a $9.5 billion pollution judgment by Ecuador's Supreme Court against Chevron "was procured through fraud, bribery and corruption and was based on claims that had been already settled and released by the Republic of Ecuador years earlier." Ecuador's attorney general plans to appeal the tribunal's ruling saying, "It worries us that the tribunal is asking a country to lift a sentence of one of its courts that was issued as part of a dispute between private parties."

Chevron continues to take oil from the Amazon region at large. El Segundo (CA), Pascagoula (MS), and Richmond (CA) refineries all process Amazonian oil. In 2015 El Segundo was the single largest refiner in the U.S. of Amazon Crude, processing 54,463 barrels per day.

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Chevron's Punitive Persecution of Steven Donziger

Additional Reading

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