Chevron ordered to pay more than $ 740 million to restore the Louisiana coast in the historic trial

By Jack Brook

Pointe to the ax, Louisiana (AP) – The oil company Chevron must pay at least $ 740 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 of the dozens of prosecutions in the process of reaching a trial in Louisiana against the main oil companies in the world for their role in the acceleration of the loss of land along the coast which quickly disappears from the state. 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.

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.

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 – a total of $ 744.6 million. Interesting the interests of the moment when the trial was brought in 2013, the amount provided for catering exceeds $ 1.1 billion, according to lawyers from Talbot, Carmouche and Marcello, the company behind the trial.

The parish had requested $ 2.6 billion in damages.

“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 appropriate 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 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”.

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 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of land during the last century, according to the US Geological Survey, which 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, warned its coastal protection agency.

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 south of Louisiana – which houses some of the largest ports in the country and the main infrastructures in the energy sector – more vulnerable to floods and the destruction of extreme meteorological events such as hurricanes.

Chevron’s main lawyer, Mike Phillips, said the company had legally operated and blamed the loss of land in Louisiana on other factors, namely the vast system of levees that prevents the Mississippi river from laying land regenerating sediments – a largely 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.

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 have been fed by payment funds, soon to expand the dark tide of Deepwater Horizon, and supporters of the dispute say that payments could provide an essential fund injection.

The lawyers of the parish said they hoped that a big payment will encourage more oil companies to come to the table and to engage in coastal catering.

“We continue to fight to restore the coast,” said Don Carmouche, a lawyer in the company representing the parish and other local governments that have filed a complaint. “All the parishes want is that companies meet for a reasonable catering of the coast.”

Originally published: April 4, 2025 at 1:17 p.m.