Chevron’s New Coat of Lipstick

By Judy Dugan
Research Director
The Foundation for Consumer and Taxpayer Rights (FCTR)
and OilWatchdog.org Project

Chevron’s Hollywood-slick new image ad looks like a public service spot for the Peace Corps, filled with helpful, happy Chevron employees around the world.

Its explicit message that “we’re not corporate titans” would make more sense if the company’s real titans hadn’t just announced a $15-billion buyback of Chevron’s own stock, appeasing Wall Street instead of investing in the world’s need to thrive on less oil. It would also be more believable if the news weren’t filled with images of the deadly suppression of pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar; there, Chevron is the only U.S. company investing in the oil and gas assets that prop up the ruling junta.

The buyback is one leg of a corporate strategy to keep oil-related profits high while avoiding real commitment to a renewable energy future and deflecting blame for misdeeds. In a way, so is the ad.

The ad declares that “for the foreseeable future, our lives demand oil” and gives short shrift to renewable fuels. Yet back in the real world, Chevron executives use the scary threat of biofuels as an excuse to curb refinery capacity.

In an interview with the Associated Press in April, Peter J. Robertson, Chevron's vice chairman, said in response to a question about possible new U.S. refineries, "Why would I invest in a refinery when you're trying to make 20 percent of the gasoline supply ethanol?" Robertson was referring to a Bush administration goal to increase use of ethanol in the fuel supply to that level by 2020—a goal not backed by a program.

Much of the 2 1/2-minute ad that kicked off Chevron’s “Human Energy” campaign is intended to portray a conscientious corporate member of the world family, rather than an unyielding defendant in multibillion-dollar pollution lawsuits brought by peasants in Ecuador and accusations in Nigeria of human-rights abuses committed by troops funded and allegedly encouraged by Chevron.

Its black eye in Myanmar is in the same mold, and was entirely avoidable.

Chevron’s purchase of Unocal in 2005 came with a large investment in natural gas fields in Myanmar.

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