Oil Majors Knew They Were Destroying The Louisiana Coast; Chevron Found Liable, But Case Now Before SCOTUS

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For a century, oil companies dredged canals through coastal wetlands, dissecting marshes to get to and from wells, and dumped toxic wastewater into marshes and unlined earthen pits. Those wells, canals, pits, and leftover pollution were largely abandoned. Oil drilling is a dwindling portion of the state’s economy today, but its legacy is a fixture of the now-sinking landscape. Louisiana loses around a football field’s worth of its wetlands every hour, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and the problem is worsening as sea levels rise. As the coast sinks, home insurance rates skyrocket, local ecosystems collapse, shrimping and fishing economies shrink, and the state’s natural flood barriers disappear — an increasingly acute threat in the face of more frequent and torrential climate-fueled hurricanes.

“After Katrina, the state did wake up and say ‘Oh shit, we used to have 90 miles of land mass between us and the Gulf of Mexico,’” said Eustis, who provides input on local industrial developments and ​​wetlands restoration projects as community science director at the nonprofit Healthy Gulf. “‘Now, we have a bunch of swiss cheese.” So came a swell of legal efforts seeking to hold oil giants accountable for driving the collapse of Louisiana’s coast — including lawsuits brought by private landowners, a regional flood protection board, a local oil company, a Republican former governor, and local parishes, the state’s equivalent of counties.

Now, one of those cases is under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court. Last year, a state court jury found Chevron liable in a lawsuit brought by Plaquemines Parish, one of more than 40 parish lawsuits accusing oil companies of failing to secure permits for their operations and neglecting to clean up the damage they left behind in violation of state coastal management law. After the landmark verdict requiring Chevron to spend $745 million to restore the coast, the company appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments in January.

In light of the industry’s successful lobbying for legislation limiting landowners’ lawsuits, parish lawsuits are an especially crucial avenue to hold the companies accountable, some local attorneys say. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the parishes and they continue to win their cases in state courts, they could make Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell, and other oil companies pay billions of dollars to help fund coastal restoration efforts as the state runs out of resources to support cleanup.

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https://www.desmog.com/2026/03/16/chevron-lawsuit-supreme-court-big-oil-knew-it-was-wrecking-louisianas-coast-records-show/