A Louisiana jury ruled that Chevron had to pay about $745 million in the parish government to help restore wetlands that the jury said the energy companies had damaged for decades.
The judgment made Friday could affect similar lawsuits filed by other parishes or counties in the state against other energy giants and their possible settlement negotiations.
Plaquemines Parish’s lawsuit is one of at least 40 lawsuits filed against fossil fuel companies since 2013.
The lawsuit argues that Dexaco, which Chevron bought in 2000, violated state law for decades, failed to apply for a coastal permit and did not unload oil and gas equipment when using the Breton Sound in southeast New Orleans.
A state regulation in 1980 requires companies operating in wetlands to “recover with viable conditions” to any canal they dug out, they drilled into the swampy well or wastewater.
Plaquemines Parish seeks $2.6 billion in damages, believing that wetland losses and pollution are directly related to oil and gas work.
However, Chevron said its activities are not responsible for decades of losses. Furthermore, it said that regulations that came into force in 1980 do not apply to oil and gas activities that began earlier.
After a four-week trial, the jury awarded Plaquemines Parish $575 million to compensate for land losses, $161 million to compensate for pollution, and $8.6 million to abandoned equipment. Chevron said it would appeal the judgment.
“This judgment is just a step to determine that the 1980 law does not apply to actions decades before the law was made,” Chevron's lead trial attorney Mike Phillips said in a statement Saturday. “The herringbone is not the cause of land loss in Breton's voice.”
Louisiana's state government is usually oil and gas industry friendly, but as state efforts reverse huge coastal land losses, the plaquemines aspect of the lawsuit.
The state lost more than 2,000 square miles due to sea level rise and loss of sediment, a free-flowing Mississippi River that once left behind along the coast until the river was bound by a levees used for flood control.
The loss of the parish of Plaquemines is especially the loss of 10 miles downstream of New Orleans.
In the last century, the original size of the parish had been reduced by nearly half. Oil and gas pipes crisscross their wetlands, exacerbating the damage to swamp vegetation by seawater. The state has taken positive measures.
Louisiana has developed a $5 billion coastal master plan to save the rise of the Gulf of Mexico. The plan includes 124 projects aimed at digging sand, rebuilding swamps, adding levees, gates and storm surge obstacles. It aims to create tens of thousands of acres of new land, protecting the remaining land and protecting the coast from hurricanes and sea level rise.
The state received billions of dollars in lawsuits from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
