Chevron lands in Texas the week it settles ‘zombie well’ lawsuit

Chevron flew from Skywest Inc Airport in Colorado to the Houston-area coordinates of Sugar Land Regional Airport on June 8, a 57-minute hop aboard its Boeing Business Jet, tail N884GL. The short hop from Colorado — where the company’s flight department spent much of the previous week ferrying executives between Midland, Colorado Springs, and other sites — brought the aircraft back to its contractual base of operations.

That same week, Chevron finalized a confidential settlement with Antina Ranch owner Ashley Watt, avoiding a January trial that would have exposed the company to liability for thousands of aging ‘zombie’ wells acquired over decades, according to a June 5 report in the Houston Chronicle. A courtroom loss could have forced Chevron and other major oil companies to dig up and re-plug legacy wells at enormous cost.

Chevron’s corporate aviation operations are based at Sugar Land Regional Airport, as confirmed by the company’s aircraft time-sharing agreement filed with regulators. The Boeing Business Jet had logged nearly 50 flights in the two weeks prior, mostly connecting Houston with oil-field destinations in West Texas and Colorado — the same region where the freighting of executives to the strategic-level settlement talks would have been routine. The Sunday-night return simply brought the plane home.