Pointe to the ax, Louisiana (AP) – The oil company Chevron has to pay $ 744.6 million to restore damage to the coastal wetlands in southeast Louisiana, a jury reigned on Friday after a historic trial more than a decade.
The case was the first to dozens of pending proceedings To achieve a trial in Louisiana against the main oil companies in the world for their role in accelerating land loss along the state disappear quickly side. The verdict – that Chevron says that it will appeal – could establish a precedent leaving other oil and gas companies to billions of dollars in damages linked to the loss of land and the deterioration of the environment.
The wetlands are seen from a helicopter on the coast of Louisiana on July 10, 2010. (AP photo / Patrick Semansky, file)
What did Chevron hurt?
The jurors noted that the Texaco energy giant, acquired by Chevron in 2001, had violated for decades the regulations of Louisiana governing coastal resources by failing to restore the wetlands affected by the dredging channels, the drilling wells and billions of gallons of wastewater poured in the marsh.
“No company is large enough to ignore the law, no company is large enough to leave without Scot,” said the principal lawyer for applicant John Carmouche during closing arguments.
A law on coastal management of Louisiana in 1978 demanded that the sites used by the oil companies “be eliminated, reveled, detoxified and otherwise restored as possible to their original state” after the end of the operations. The old operating sites that continued to be used were not exempt and companies had to request permits.
But the oil company did not obtain an appropriate license and failed to clean its waste, leading to the contamination of dangerous stored wastewater or spilled directly in the marsh, said the trial.
The company has also not followed best practices known for decades since it started to operate in the region in the 1940s, expert witnesses of the applicant said. The company “has chosen profits on the marsh” and has enabled the deterioration of the environment caused by its operations to emerge and spread, said Carmouche.
The jury granted $ 575 million to compensate for the loss of land, $ 161 million to compensate for contamination and $ 8.6 million for abandoned equipment. The amount intended for catering exceeds $ 1.1 billion during interest, according to lawyers from Talbot, Carmouche and Marcello, the company behind the trial.
The parish of Platemines, the district of southeast of Louisiana, which brought a trial, had requested $ 2.6 billion in damages.
The main lawyer for the Chevron trial, Mike Phillips, said in a statement according to the verdict that “Chevron is not the cause of the loss of land” in the parish of Platemines and that the law does not apply to “the conduct which occurred from decades before the promulgation”.
Phillips called for the “unfair” decision and said that there were “many legal errors”.
Chevron whose seat reported More than $ 3 billion in profits for the fourth quarter of 2024.
How do oil companies contribute to the loss of land of Louisiana?
The trial against Chevron was filed in 2013 by the parish of Platemines, a rural district of Louisiana straddling the last stage of the Mississippi towards the Gulf of Mexico, also called the Gulf of America as indicated by President Donald Trump.
The coastal parishes of Louisiana lost more than 2,000 squares (5,180 square kilometers) of land during the last century, according to the US Geological Surveywhich has also identified oil and gas infrastructure as an important cause. The state could lose 3,000 additional squares (7,770 square kilometers) in the coming decades, its coastal protection agency warned.
Thousands of kilometers of cut canals through wetlands by oil companies weaken them and exacerbate the impacts of sea level elevation. Industrial wastewater of oil production degrades the surrounding soil and vegetation. The torn wetlands leave southern Louisiana – which houses some of the largest ports in the country and the key infrastructure in the energy sector – more vulnerable to floods and the destruction of extreme meteorological events such as hurricanes.
Phillips, Chevron’s lawyer, said that the company had legally operated and blamed the loss of land in Louisiana on other factors, namely the vast dike system which prevents the Mississippi from depositing regenerating land – a widely recognized Cause of coastal erosion.
The way to solve the problem of loss of land is “not to continue the oil companies, it reconnects the Mississippi with the Delta,” said Phillips during the closing arguments.
However, the trial held the company responsible for the exacerbation and acceleration of the loss of land in Louisiana, rather than being its only cause.
Chevron also challenged the expensive wetland restoration project proposed by the parish, which involved removing large quantities of contaminated soil and filling the fragmented wet areas eroded during the last century. The company said that the plan was not practical and designed to inflate damage rather than leading to the implementation of the real world.
Lawyer Jimmy Faircloth, Jr., who represented the state of Louisiana, who supported the plaquemines and other local governments in their prosecution against the oil companies, told the parish that Chevron told them that their community was not worth preserving.
“Our communities are built on the coast, our families raised on the coast, our children go to school on the coast,” said Ferircloth. “The state of Louisiana will not give up the coast, it is for the good of the state that the coast must be maintained.”
What does this mean for future disputes against oil companies?
Carmouche, a well -connected lawyer, and his office were responsible for carrying many prosecution against state oil companies. Industry groups have accused the company of looking for large wages, not coastal catering.
The economy of Louisiana has long depends on the oil and gas industry and industry for a long time has significant political power. Despite this, the pro-industrial governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, supported the prosecution, in particular by bringing the state on board during his mandate as a attorney general.
The oil companies fought teeth and nails to cancel the dispute, in particular by putting pressure on the Louisiana legislature to adopt a law to invalidate complaints. Chevron and other companies have also tried several times to move the prosecution to the Federal Court where they thought they would find a more sympathetic audience.
But the heavy chevron price should pay could accelerate other companies to seek regulations in the dozens of other proceedings in Louisiana. Platemines alone account for 20 other cases pending against oil companies.
The state is short of money to support its ambitious coastal catering plans, which were fed by settlement funds soon expiring from the Spill on Deepwater Horizon horizonAnd supporters of the dispute say that payments could provide a much necessary injection of funds.
Tommy Faucheux, president of Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, said that the verdict against Chevron “compromises the position of Louisiana as a leader of energy” and “threatens the trajectory of our country to the domination of energy in America around the world”. He warned that “companies here may be continued retroactively tomorrow for following today’s laws”.
The parish lawyers said they hoped for a large payment to encourage more oil companies to come to the table to negotiate and channel more funding for coastal catering.
“Our energy focuses on the guarantee of verdicts and appropriate rewards for each parish involved in these actions,” said Carmouche in a press release. “If we continue to succeed in our efforts, these parishes and Louisiana will have sent a clear message that the future of Louisiana must be built around a new balance between our energy industry and environmental necessities.”
