Chevron Corporation

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Chevron Corporation

logo
legal form Corporation
ISIN US1667641005
founding 1879
Seat San Ramon , California , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
management John S. Watson ( Chairman and CEO )
Number of employees 44,649
sales 146.5 billion US dollars
Branch Oil and gas
Website www.chevron.com
As of December 31, 2019

Chevron Corporation is a global energy company . He is one of the world's largest oil companies and according to Chevron is the largest producer of geothermal energy . Its headquarters are in San Ramon , California (USA) and Fortaleza (Brazil), but the group is active in more than 180 countries. Chevron Corporation operates in the oil and gas industry. Business fields are the development and extraction of crude oil , marketing and transport as well as chemical production.

With sales of $ 139.4 billion and a profit of $ 10.2 billion, Chevron ranks 21st among the world's largest companies according to Forbes Global 2000 (as of FY 2017). The company had a market capitalization of approximately USD 248 billion in mid-2018. The largest shareholders are currently (October 2018) The Vanguard Group (6.94 percent), BlackRock (6.40 percent) and State Street Corporation (6.23 percent). A 2019 study found that Chevron was the world's second-highest company during this period, emitting 43.35 billion tons of CO 2 equivalent since 1965.

history

Structure of the large corporations in the oil industry

The company has its roots in the discovery of petroleum in Pico Canyon (now Pico Canyon Oilfield) north of Los Angeles . The discovery led to the creation of the Pacific Coast Oil Company in 1879 , the oldest predecessor of the Chevron Corporation. In 1901 the Texas Fuel Company , a three-room company in Beaumont Texas, was founded. The company later became known as Texaco . In 1911 the name Standard Oil of California (SoCal) was adopted because John D. Rockefeller's company Standard Oil had to be split up.

1933 SoCal received from Saudi Arabia , the concession for oil exploration, and they were successful 1938th At the beginning of the 1950s, SoCal opened up the world's largest oil field ( Ghawar ) in Saudi Arabia. The SoCal subsidiary California-Arabian Standard Oil Company developed over the years into the Arabian American Oil Company ( ARAMCO ).

From 1973 the government of Saudi Arabia bought into ARAMCO. By 1980 the company was wholly owned by the Saudi Arabian government. In 1988 the company was changed to Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco).

1984 saw the largest merger to date between Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil . In order to meet the requirements of antitrust authorities , various oil stations in the Gulf and a refinery on the east coast of the USA were sold. As part of the merger, the name changed to Chevron Corporation.

In June 1998, Chevron's biogas division and NGC Corp. the Dynegy Inc. established.

In 2001 the former Chevron Corporation merged with Texaco and renamed itself ChevronTexaco . However, on May 9, 2005 the Texaco attachment was filed again. Texaco was to continue to serve as the brand name of the Chevron Corporation.

Since August 21, 2007, Chevron has had to answer for human rights violations in Nigeria in San Francisco . In May 1998, a demonstration by 121 young people of the Ijaw people was forcibly broken up by the army at the request of Chevron. Two demonstrators died in the protests and eleven were arrested and tortured. Chevron continues to be held responsible for the destruction of the villages of Opia and Ikeyan in the Nigerian state of Delta .

On July 20, 2020, Chevron announced that it would take over Noble Energy for $ 5 billion.

Condoleezza Rice , security advisor and later Secretary of State of the United States of America , was a director at Chevron from 1991. As usual at Chevron, a tanker was named after her (which was renamed Altair Voyager after her entry into the Bush administration ).

Business figures

Business and employee development (respective fiscal year)
year Sales
in billions of US $
Balance sheet profit
in billion US $
Employees
2005 198,200 14.099 59,000
2006 210.118 17.138 62,500
2007 220.904 18.688 65,000
2008 273.005 23.931 67,000
2009 171.636 10,483 64,000
2010 204.928 19.024 62,000
2011 253.706 26,895 61,000
2012 241,909 26,179 62,000
2013 228.848 21,423 64,600
2014 211.970 19.241 64,700
2015 138.477 4,587 61,500
2016 114.472 −0.497 55,200
2017 141.722 9.195 51,900
2018 166.339 14.824 48,600
2019 146.516 2.924 48,200

Environmental conflicts

Ecuador

From the 1960s to 1992, Texaco had produced oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon, mostly in partnership with the state oil company Petroecuador. After the withdrawal from Ecuador, Chevron paid US $ 40 million to repair environmental damage to the Ecuadorian government, which exempted Texaco from further claims. According to those affected, ecologists and lawyers, this oil production has poisoned nature and people, which has led to diseases and deaths among the indigenous people. 30,000 residents sued the legal successor Chevron, who bought Texaco in 2001. Chevron refused to make any further payments and denied responsibility for any consequences; after all, Petroecuador continued to be solely responsible and Texaco was released from liability. In 2006, the group received the Public Eye Award for particularly irresponsible behavior towards people and the environment.

After a legal battle of more than 18 years, Chevron was sentenced in February 2011 by the provincial court of Lago Agrio to an initial fine of 8.6 billion US dollars, the highest penalty ever imposed on an oil company for environmental damage. In addition, the company should publicly apologize in newspaper advertisements in Ecuador and the United States within 15 days , otherwise the sentence threatened to be doubled. A large part of the sum is earmarked for repairing the damage, because for decades large amounts of crude oil have seeped into the ground from old production sites and contaminated the rainforest. The appeals court doubled the penalty in January 2012 after Chevron failed to apologize. In November 2012 Argentina announced that it would provide legal assistance and ordered the confiscation of Chevron assets until the sum of 19 billion US dollars was reached, an internationally unique process.

In November 2015, a Canadian court of appeal recognized the claims of indigenous peoples and smallholders from Ecuador against the company. This allows Chevron assets in Canada to be seized for compensation. In total, it is a total of $ 9.5 billion. The judges confirmed the company's responsibility for serious environmental damage caused by the exploitation of oil reserves in Ecuador.

The New York federal judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled in 2014 in RICO proceedings in favor of Chevron. In his reasoning for the verdict, he stated that the verdict in Ecuador had been achieved through bribery, money laundering and coercion and therefore cannot be enforced in the USA. The plaintiff subsequently lost his license as a result.

In September 2018, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague declared the Ecuadorian judgment invalid. It upheld Chevron's objection that the verdict was based on bribery. In addition, the judgment violated an investment protection agreement between Ecuador and the USA.

Brazil

On November 7, 2011, several thousand barrels of oil leaked from Chevron wells off the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro and polluted the Campos Basin . According to the oil company, the reason was incorrect pressure calculations for test drilling. After ten days the leak could be closed. Brazil then demanded 8.3 billion euros in damages from Chevron.

Proceedings against environmental activists

In October 2013, Chevron initiated proceedings in a New York court to have environmental activists, journalists and lawyers declared a criminal organization.

Negative environmental price

In 2015, Chevron received the Lifetime Award of the Public Eye on Davos for years of rejecting any responsibility for environmental damage , after the group had already received an “award” in the environmental category in 2006.

In contrast, the Jared Diamond claims in his 2005 book “Collapse. Why societies survive or perish " , the Chevron Group would be a counter-example to the numerous ore mining, coal mining, gas and oil companies, whose unscrupulous" rational "approach he sharply criticizes. Diamond came to his conclusion after visiting the Kutubu oil field in Papua New Guinea four times as a consultant to the WWF between 1998 and 2003 . According to him, the oil production there is operated so massively from an environmental point of view that even animal species that are on the verge of extinction have become home again. He closes his report on it with the sentence: "Actually, the Kutubu oil field is by far the largest and most strictly controlled national park in Papua New Guinea." (P. 550) That Chevron announced the Norwegian tender for the development of an oil and gas field in the North Sea won, is attributed to its good reputation for environmental protection. Diamond rates the “western world” positively in principle, while indigenous peoples are viewed by him as more aggressive and ready to use violence.

Shale gas mining

Chevron is involved in shale gas mining in the form of fracking worldwide , including in Pennsylvania and eastern Poland . In November 2013, Chevron signed a $ 10 billion shale gas production contract with Ukraine . The group is accused of not paying enough attention to the effects of gas extraction on the environment and drinking water. The large-scale water abstraction from - too small - rivers, the very fine, carcinogenic, dust lung-causing quartz sand used as a proppant and the water masses that come back to the surface after decades - sometimes even years - mixed with heavy metals and hydrocarbon compounds some criticisms of chevron. Chevron took over Atlas Energy in 2010.

literature

Jared Diamond : Collapse. Why societies survive or perish . Fischer paperback no.16730, Frankfurt am Main 2005

Web links

Commons : Chevron Corporation  - Collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John S. Watson ( Memento June 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. a b Annual Report 2019. (PDF) In: chevron.com. Retrieved May 22, 2020 .
  3. Chevron Geothermal ( Memento from June 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Chevron on the Forbes Global 2000 List . In: Forbes . ( forbes.com [accessed July 18, 2018]).
  5. (JNJ) Summary of Shareholder Structure - NASDAQ.com. Retrieved December 31, 2017 (American English).
  6. Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions. The Guardian, accessed October 9, 2019 .
  7. Telepolis : “Chevron in the Dock,” August 22, 2007
  8. ^ Chevron Announces Agreement to Acquire Noble Energy. In: chevron.com. July 20, 2020, accessed on July 20, 2020 .
  9. Condoleezza Rice has been a director at Chevron since 1991 ( Memento from June 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  10. Chevron redubs ship named for Bush aide / Condoleezza Rice drew too much attention
  11. Chevron - 48 Year Stock Price History | CVX. Retrieved October 22, 2018 .
  12. Company profile . Retrieved October 22, 2018 .
  13. Alexandra Endres, Lukas Koschnitzke: How corporations drive states in front of them. In: zeit.de. March 27, 2014, accessed November 5, 2018 .
  14. http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/chevron102.html ( Memento from February 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ Oil company Chevron sentenced to billions in fine. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . February 15, 2011, accessed February 15, 2011 .
  16. ^ Judges double billions in fine against oil company Chevron. In: Spiegel Online . 4th January 2012.
  17. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20246295 Argentina 'freezes Chevron assets' over Ecuador damage
  18. ^ Solidarity against Chevron - Argentina is providing legal assistance to Ecuador and confiscating company assets. In: new Germany . November 9, 2012.
  19. http://www.taz.de/Umweltschaeden-in-Ecuador/!5227295/
  20. Kevin D. Williamson: Green Floyd: Roger Waters and the Great Green Chevron Scam. In: nationalreview.com. October 30, 2018, accessed November 5, 2018 .
  21. ^ Court overturns judgment against US oil company Chevron in Ecuador. In: nzz.ch. September 8, 2018, accessed November 5, 2018 .
  22. EPD / Reuters / dma: Environmental disaster: Brazil demands 8.3 billion euros from Chevron. In: welt.de . December 15, 2011, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  23. Electronic Frontier Foundation: Civil rights activists take legal action against oil multinational Chevron. In: heise online . 15th November 2013.
  24. Jared Diamond # review
  25. arte.tv: Gas Fieber ( Memento from July 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), documentation by Lech Kowalski in about the long-running shale gas mining in Bradford County (Pennsylvania) , Pennsylvania and the region around the eastern Polish city of Zamosc in the work should only begin (video offline, summary of the content still available online).
  26. ^ Raw material frenzy : US company Chevron takes over shale gas company , Spiegel Online from November 9, 2010