Chevron ordered to pay more than $740 million to restore Louisiana coast
in landmark trial
[April 05, 2025] By
JACK BROOK
POINTE À LA HACHE, La. (AP) — Oil company Chevron must pay $744.6
million to restore damage it caused to southeast Louisiana's coastal
wetlands, a jury ruled on Friday following a landmark trial more than a
decade in the making.
The case was the first of dozens of pending lawsuits to reach trial in
Louisiana against the world’s leading oil companies for their role in
accelerating land loss along the state’s rapidly disappearing coast. The
verdict – which Chevron says it will appeal – could set a precedent
leaving other oil and gas firms on the hook for billions of dollars in
damages tied to land loss and environmental degradation.
What did Chevron do wrong?
Jurors found that energy giant Texaco, acquired by Chevron in 2001, had
for decades violated Louisiana regulations governing coastal resources
by failing to restore wetlands impacted by dredging canals, drilling
wells and billions of gallons of wastewater dumped into the marsh.
“No company is big enough to ignore the law, no company is big enough to
walk away scot-free,” the plaintiff’s lead attorney John Carmouche told
jurors during closing arguments.
A 1978 Louisiana coastal management law mandated that sites used by oil
companies “be cleared, revegetated, detoxified, and otherwise restored
as near as practicable to their original condition” after operations
ended. Older operations sites that continued to be used were not exempt
and companies were required to apply for permits.
But the oil company did not obtain proper permits and failed to clean up
its mess, leading to contamination from wastewater stored unsafely or
dumped directly into the marsh, the lawsuit said.
The company also failed to follow known best practices for decades since
it began operating in the area in the 1940s, expert witnesses for the
plaintiff’s testified. The company “chose profits over the marsh" and
allowed the environmental degradation caused by its operations to fester
and spread, Carmouche said.
The jury awarded $575 million to compensate for land loss, $161 million
to compensate for contamination and $8.6 million for abandoned
equipment. The amount earmarked for restoration exceeds $1.1 billion
when including interest, according to attorneys for Talbot, Carmouche &
Marcello, the firm behind the lawsuit.
Plaquemines Parish, the southeast Louisiana district which brought the
lawsuit, had asked for $2.6 billion in damages.
Chevron's lead trial attorney Mike Phillips said in a statement
following the verdict that “Chevron is not the cause of the land loss
occurring” in Plaquemines Parish and that the law does not apply to
“conduct that occurred decades before the law was enacted.”
Phillips called the ruling “unjust” and said there were “numerous legal
errors.”
Houston-headquartered Chevron reported more than $3 billion in earnings
for the fourth quarter of 2024.
How are oil companies contributing to Louisiana’s land loss?
The lawsuit against Chevron was filed in 2013 by Plaquemines Parish, a
rural district in Louisiana straddling the final leg of the Mississippi
River heading into the Gulf of Mexico, also referred to as the Gulf of
America as declared by President Donald Trump.
Louisiana’s coastal parishes have lost more than 2,000 square miles
(5,180 square kilometers) of land over the past century, according to
the U.S. Geological Survey, which has also identified oil and gas
infrastructure as a significant cause. The state could lose another
3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) in the coming decades, its
coastal protection agency has warned.
Thousands of miles of canals cut through the wetlands by oil companies
weakens them and exacerbates the impacts of sea level rise. Industrial
wastewater from oil production degrades the surrounding soil and
vegetation. The torn up wetlands leave South Louisiana – home to some of
the nation’s biggest ports and key energy sector infrastructure -- more
vulnerable to flooding and destruction from extreme weather events like
hurricanes.
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This Tuesday, May 2, 2017, photo shows a Chevron sign at a gas
station in Miami. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz, File)
 Phillips, Chevron's attorney, said
the company had operated lawfully and blamed land loss in Louisiana
on other factors, namely the extensive levee system that blocks the
Mississippi River from depositing land regenerating sediment — a
widely acknowledged cause of coastal erosion.
The way to solve the land loss problem is “not suing oil companies,
it’s reconnecting the Mississippi River with the delta,” Phillips
said during closing arguments.
Yet the lawsuit held the company responsible for exacerbating and
accelerating land loss in Louisiana, rather than being its sole
cause.
Chevron also challenged the costly wetlands restoration project
proposed by the parish, which involved removing large amounts of
contaminated soil and filling in the swaths fragmented wetlands
eroded over the past century. The company said the plan was
impractical and designed to inflate the damages rather than lead to
real world implementation.
Attorney Jimmy Faircloth, Jr., who represented the state of
Louisiana, which has backed Plaquemines and other local governments
in their lawsuits against oil companies, told jurors from the parish
that Chevron was telling them their community was not worth
preserving.
“Our communities are built on coast, our families raised on coast,
our children go to school on coast,” Faircloth said. “The state of
Louisiana will not surrender the coast, it’s for the good of the
state that the coast be maintained.”
What does this mean for future litigation against oil companies?
Carmouche, a well-connected attorney, and his firm have been
responsible for bringing many of the lawsuits against oil companies
in the state. Industry groups have accused the firm of seeking big
paydays, not coastal restoration.
Louisiana’s economy has long been heavily dependent on the oil and
gas industry and the industry holds significant political power.
Even so, Louisiana’s staunchly pro-industry Gov. Jeff Landry has
supported the lawsuits, including bringing the state on board during
his tenure as Attorney General.
Oil companies have fought tooth and nail to quash the litigation,
including unsuccessfully lobbying Louisiana’s Legislature to pass a
law to invalidate the claims. Chevron and other firms also
repeatedly tried to move the lawsuits into federal court where they
believed they would find a more sympathetic audience.
But the heavy price Chevron is set to pay could hasten other firms
to seek settlements in the dozens of other lawsuits across
Louisiana. Plaquemines alone has 20 other cases pending against oil
companies.
The state is running out of money to support its ambitious coastal
restoration plans, which have been fueled by soon-expiring
settlement funds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and
supporters of the litigation say payouts could provide a much-needed
injection of funds.
Tommy Faucheux, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas
Association, said the verdict against Chevron “undermines
Louisiana’s position as an energy leader” and “threatens our
country’s trajectory to America-first energy dominance across the
globe.” He warned that “businesses here are at risk of being sued
retroactively tomorrow for following the laws of today.”
Attorneys for the parish said they hope that big payout will prompt
more oil companies to come to the table to negotiate and channel
more funding towards coastal restoration.
“Our energy is focused on securing appropriate verdicts and awards
for every parish involved in these actions,” Carmouche said in a
statement. “If we continue to be successful in our efforts, these
parishes, and Louisiana, will have sent a clear message that
Louisiana's future must be built around a new balance between our
energy industry and environmental necessities."
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