By Jack Brook
Pointeà la Hache, La
The case was the first of dozens of pending lawsuits to be tried in Louisiana against leading oil companies around the world for its role in accelerating land losses along the state’s rapidly disappearing coast. The verdict that Chevron says he will appeal could set precedents that have linked other oil and gas companies to billions of dollars in damage and environmental degradation.
What did Chevron do wrong?
The ju apprentices discovered that energy giant Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, had for decades violated Louisiana’s regulations that manage coastal resources by impacting wetlands, drilling wells and restoring billions of gallons of wastewater that were dumped into the wetlands for decades.
The ry judge awarded $575 million to compensate for land losses, $161 million to compensate for contamination, and $8.6 million to abandoned equipment. It totals $744.6 million. The amount allocated for repairs, including interest since the case was filed in 2013, is over $1.1 billion, according to lawyers for Talbot, Carmouche & Marcello, the company behind the lawsuit.
The parish had sought $2.6 billion in damages.
“No company is big enough to ignore the law. No company is big enough to be farther away than Scotland,” the plaintiff’s chief lawyer, John Calmouche, told the ju judge during the closing discussion.
Louisiana’s Coastal Management Act of 1978 required sites used by oil companies to be “cleared, revived, detoxed, and otherwise restored to their original state.” Older operating sites that continued to be used were not exempt, and businesses were expected to apply for appropriate permits.
However, the oil company said it would not obtain proper permits, fail to clean up the mess and file a lawsuit that contamination from the wastewater was unsafe or was dumped directly into the wetlands.
The company has also failed to follow known best practices for decades since it began operating in the region in the 1940s. The company “chosen profits over wetlands” and allowed the environmental degradation caused by the operation to expand and spread, Kalmouche said.
Chevron’s Chief Trial Attorney Mike Phillips, in a statement after the verdict, said in the Parish of Plaquemins that “chevron is not the cause of land loss,” and that the law “does not apply to conduct that occurred decades before the law was enacted.”
Phillips called the ruling “unjust” and called it “a large number of legal errors.”
How do oil companies contribute to land losses in Louisiana?
The lawsuit against Chevron was filed in 2013 by the Parish of Plaquemins, a rural Louisiana district. It straddled the final leg of the Mississippi River and headed towards the Gulf of Mexico, also known as the American Gulf where President Donald Trump was declared.
According to the US Geological Survey, Louisiana coastal parishes have lost 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) over the past century. The state could lose another 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) over the coming decades, its coastal protection agency warns.
Thousands of miles of canals are sweeping through wetlands by oil companies, weakening them, exacerbating the effects of sea level rise. Industrial wastewater from oil production decomposes surrounding soil and vegetation. The torn wetlands leave South Louisiana, home to the country’s largest port and major energy sector infrastructure.
Chevron’s lead lawyer Mike Phillips said the company legally operated and condemned other factors: land losses in Louisiana, a wide-ranging levee system that prevented the Mississippi River from depositing reclaimed sediments.
The solution to the land loss problem is “not suing oil companies, reconnecting the Mississippi River with the Delta,” Phillips said during the closing discussion.
However, the lawsuit is not its sole cause, but is responsible for exacerbating and accelerating the loss of land in Louisiana.
Chevron also challenged the expensive wetland restoration project proposed by the parish. This included removing large amounts of contaminated soil that had been eroded over the past century and filling in fragmented wetlands. The company said the plan was practical and designed to inflate damage rather than lead to real-world implementation.
Attorney Jimmy Faircross Jr., who represents Louisiana, supported Plakemin and other local governments in lawsuits against the oil company, told the parish ju judge that Chevron told them it was not worth saving their community.
“Our community is built on the coast, our families grow up on the coast, our kids go to coastal schools,” Faircross said. “Louisiana does not abandon its coast, it is in the interest of the nation that it is maintained.”
What does this mean for future litigation against the oil company?
A well-connected lawyer, Carmouche and his company are responsible for filing many lawsuits against the state oil companies.
Louisiana’s economy has long been heavily dependent on the oil and gas industry, and the industry has a vital political power. Still, Louisiana’s stubborn industrial governor Jeff Landry supports the lawsuit, including mounting the state during his tenure as Attorney General.
The oil company has fought teeth and nails to counter the lawsuit, including failing to pass laws to void the claims in Louisiana Legislature. Chevron and other companies also tried to move the case to federal court. There they believed they would find a more sympathetic audience.
But because Chevron is set to pay, other companies can hurry up and seek settlement in dozens of other lawsuits across Louisiana. There are 20 cases pending for oil companies on Plaquemines alone.
The nation has exhausted its money to support an ambitious coastal restoration plan driven by settlement funds that soon emerge from the deep horizontal oil spill, and supporters of the lawsuit say it can provide much-needed funds to pay.
The parish lawyer said he hopes that the large payments will encourage more oil companies to come to the table and engage in coastal recovery.
“We will continue to fight to restore the coast,” said Don Calmouche, a lawyer for the company representing the parish and other local governments that filed the lawsuit. “What the parish wants is for businesses to come together for a reasonable recovery of the coast.”
Original issue: April 4, 2025, 4:17pm EDT
