Chevron: Saving The World One Gas Station at a Time

A Nigerian woman stands beside an oil pipe in the tattered village

Chevron:
- An American multinational energy corporation.
- Headquartered in San Ramon, California
- Active in more then 180 countries
- Engaged in all aspects of oil, gas, and geothermal industries:
• exploration and production
• refining, marketing and transport
• chemicals manufacturing and sales
• power generation
• also one of the world's 6 "supermajor" oil companies

- Chevron's 2008 annual report to its shareholders is a celebration celebrating the company's most profitable year in its history. Profits of $24 billion deemed Chevron the second most profitable corporation in the United states after Exxon Mobil.

- Chevron's 2007 revenues were larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of 150 nations.

- The annual report does not reveal the true cost paid for those financial returns:

• lives lost
• wars fought
• communities destroyed
• environments decimated
• livelihoods ruined
• and political voices silenced

- Also doesn't describe the global resistance movement gaining voice and strength against these operations. Communities affected negatively by this corporations activity have prepared an Alternative Annual Report.

- In California, Chevron is the state's largest corporation and the dominant oil industry force before the state legislature.

- As one of the major players in what is increasingly recognized as "rogue industry," Chevron buys assurance that the government representatives will look the other way as the health of communities and environments around the planet are destroyed.

- Chevron also hires military "protection" against locals, evidenced in Iraq, the Niger Delta, Chad, Cameroon, Angola, and Burma.

- Places where Chevron is stationed are called their "company towns".

- In Cabinda, the heart of Angola's oil production, Chevron is polluting and destroying the environment. It puts locals on edge and it stunts the area's developmental possibilities.

- In Chevron's Chad-Cameroon project, violence has sky-rocketed, impoverished people in the oil fields and along the pipe route, and has exacerbated pressures on indigenous peoples.

- In the Niger Delta, the Earth's most oil damaged region, Chevron employes the notoriously brutal Nigerian military to provide it with security services.

• The military uses violence to repress local peaceful protesters.



- Oil is running out. The oil that is left is found in more environmentally, socially, and politically sensitive areas and is more hotly contested.

- Chevron spends, at best, less than 3 percent of its capital and exploratory budget on green energy.

- Cheveron marks itself as an "alternative energy" company that is "part of the solution".

- In April 2010, The largest blowout in thirty years of an oil and gas well in the Gulf of Mexico killed eleven people and saturated the surrounding areas in a blanket of oily destruction.

- The burst rig was owned by Transocean, the company with which Chevron has a 5 year contract to operate.

- Chevron's 2009 annual report "celebrated 130 years of Chevron operations" which included operating "with the highest standards of integrity and respect for human rights."

-- To bring us back to the prepared Alternnative Annual Report for Chevron; the sixty-page report encompasses the full range of Chevron's (real) activities, like coal and chemicals, and pipelines and refineries.

On May 25, 2010, forty authors of the alternative report appeared at a press conference in Houston. The conference was to address the true cost of Chevron's operations in their communities.

- The next day, they delivered the report directly to Chevron inside the company's annual general meeting (AGM) while supporters rallied outside.

• 5 protesters were arrested from the site
• Chevron refused entry from 2 dozen people from affected areas around the world like Nigeria, Ecuadore, and Burma.



See the 2010 Alternative Report at the True Cost of Chevron web page.