36
F
UEL
U
ND
E
R
FIR
E
B
I
G
O
IL
A common nickname for the oil industry is Big Oil—and
that name is appropriate.
Oil companies are among the larg-
est businesses in the world. Consider just one US oil company,
Chevron, which is headquartered in San Ramon, California,
and works globally. In Africa, Chevron operates oil fields in
Angola, Chad, Nigeria, and several other countries. In central
Asia, Chevron extracts oil in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Other
Asian operations of Chevron are in Cambodia, China, Indone-
sia, and Thailand. Chevron has offshore oil rigs in Brazil and
Venezuela in South America. Additional Chevron offshore oper-
ations are in the North Sea of western Europe. Chevron extracts
oil from Canada’s tar sands in Alberta. At home in the United
States, Chevron extracts oil in ten states, plus the Gulf of Mex-
ico. Chevron also owns oil refineries, pipelines, and gas stations
in the United States and around the world. Chevron is finan-
cially powerful, with annual profits of about $26 billion.
CHAP TER THREE
