Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation predominantly in oil and gas. The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California (shortened to Socal or CalSo), it is headquartered in San Ramon, California, and active in more than 180 countries. Within oil and gas, Chevron is vertical integrated and is involved in hydrocarbon exploration, production, refining, marketing and transport, chemicals manufacturing and sales, and power generation. Chevron traces its history back to the 1870s. The company grew quickly after the breakup of Standard Oil by acquiring companies and partnering with others, eventually becoming one of the Seven Sisters that dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. In 1985, Socal merged with the Pittsburgh-based Gulf Oil and rebranded as Chevron; the newly merged company later merged with Texaco in 2001. Today, Chevron manufactures and sells fuels, lubricants, additives, and petrochemicals, primarily in Western North America, the U.S. Gulf Coast, Southeast Asia, South Korea and Australia. In 2018, the company produced an average of 791,000 barrels of net oil-equivalent per day in United States. Chevron is one of the largest companies in the world and the second largest oil company based in the United States by revenue, only behind fellow Standard Oil descendant ExxonMobil. Chevron ranked 16th on the Fortune 500 in 2022 with revenues of US$162.5 billion, which also ranked it 37th on the Fortune Global 500. The company is also the last-remaining oil and gas component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since ExxonMobil's exit from the index in 2020. Chevron has been subject to numerous controversies arising out of its activities, the most notable of which being related to its activities and inherited liabilities from its acquisition of Texaco in the Lago Agrio oil field, which include allegations of both Chevron and Texaco collectively dumping 18 billion tons of toxic waste and spilling 17 million gallons of petroleum. Chevron and Texaco's activities were the subject of a lawsuit Chevron lost to Ecuadorian residents defended in Ecuadorian court by Steven Donziger. Due to accusations of Donziger bribing the Ecuadorian court and the subsequent disbarment and criminal contempt charges against Donziger, Chevron was accused by environmentalists and human rights groups of jailing Donziger and compelling the US government to deny Donziger due process of law.
