After a biased New York judge blocked a ruling by an Ecuadorian court that Chevron must pay a $15 billion fine for, among other things, dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon’s waterways, the Ecuadorians appealed to Canada’s Supreme Court. On September 4, this court rejected Chevron’s attempt to get the fine blocked there, too. The decision means that the lawsuit may proceed.

Like ExxonMobil, Chevron has a very long history of bad behavior. “Like the other oil giants,” environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote, “Chevron shows the same casual disregard for people around the world.” Here are three examples:

The Richmond Explosion

In August 2012, there was an explosion at Chevron’s refinery in Richmond, California, resulting in a big fire and toxic release, which sent 15,000 people to the hospital. Failing to get adequate compensation from Chevron, Richmond filed a lawsuit in 2013, charging it with “disregard of public safety,” reflecting “years of neglect, lax oversight and corporate indifference to necessary safety inspection and repairs.”

According to Reuters, the US Chemical Safety Board said:

    Chevron did not act upon six recommendations over 10 years to increase inspection and replace the line…. During the 10 years before the August 6 blast, refinery officials saw signs the pipeline’s walls were thinning due to corrosion.

California Carbon Emissions

Although Chevron has from the beginning been aware of California’s 2007 order to develop a cellulosic biofuel replacement for gasoline, in 2013, it declared that it has “not come up with a solution to be able to comply,” because the task is “not achievable.” Chevron’s assessment, however, is likely due to the fact that it “quietly shelved most of its biofuels work in 2010.” As we have seen, the effort to create cellulosic biofuel for vehicles has made tremendous progress in the past few years. But far from continuing to test the breakthroughs, “Chevron is leading a lobbying and public relations campaign to undercut the California mandate.” As for Chevron’s real reason for declaring the mandate unachievable, a man who left Chevron in 2010 said: “You can make money today making advanced biofuels, you just won’t make as much money as the oil companies would like.”