Chevron must pay $ 745 million for coastal damage, rules of the Louisiana jury
A jury in Louisiana has established that Chevron has to pay to a parish government about $ 745 million to help restore the wetlands that the jury said that the energy company had damaged for decades.
The verdict, which was reached on Friday, is likely to influence similar causes intended by other parishes, or counties, in the state against other energy giants and their possible settlement negotiations.
The cause, integrated by the parish of Plaquemines, is one of the at least 40 coastal parishes presented against the fossil fuels since 2013.
The cause claimed that Texaco – Chevron bought In 2000 – the state law violated for decades unable to request coastal permits and not removing the oil and gas equipment when it stopped using an oil field in Breton soundwhich is located in the south -east of New Orleans.
A state regulation In 1980 they asked the companies that operated in wetlands to restore “closer to their original conditions” any channels that dragged themselves, wells that perforated or waste water that unloaded on swamps.
The parish of Plaquemine, who had asked for damage to $ 2.6 billion, argued that the loss and pollution of the wetlands were directly linked to oil and gas work.
However, Chevron said that his activities were not responsible for the decades of damage. Furthermore, he said that the regulations that entered into force in 1980 did not apply to the oil and gas activities that began previously.
The jury, after a four -week trial, assigned the parish of Plaquinsmines $ 575 million to compensate for the loss of land, $ 161 million to compensate for contamination and $ 8.6 million for abandoned equipment. Chevron said he would appeal to the verdict.
“This verdict is only one step in the process to establish that the 1980 law does not apply to the conduct that took place before the law was issued,” said Mike Phillips, a main trial lawyer for Chevron, in a Saturday declaration. “Chevron is not the cause of the loss of land that occurs in Breton’s sound.”
The state government of the Louisiana, although usually friendly towards the oil industry and gas, took the part of the plates in the cause, while the state struggle to reverse a vast loss of coastal land.
The state has lost more than 2,000 square milesAbout the terrestrial area of Delaware, due to the rise of sea level and the loss of sediments that a river with free flow was left behind the coast, until the river was tied by the banks built for the control of floods.
The loss in the parish of Plaquemines, which is 10 miles in the New Orleans jerk, is particularly acute.
The parish has been reduced for almost half of its original dimensions in the last century. The oil and gas channels cross its wetlands, exacerbating the destruction of sea water of the marshy vegetation. The state has taken aggressive countermeasures.
Louisiana has implemented a 50 -year -olds of 50 -year -olds from $ 50 billion to try to save what can from the growing Gulf of Mexico. The plan includes 124 projects designed to drag the sand, reconstruct degraded swamps and add arguments, doors and barriers of storm waves. It aims to create tens of thousands of new earth acres, preserving what the earth remains and protecting the coast from hurricanes and the rise of sea level.
The state received billions of dollars from settlement of legal actions deriving since 2010 Horizon of deep water Payment of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, which was the worst leakage of offshore oil in the history of the United States.
