Consolidated Financial Statements, page FS-42, for further discussion. Management believes these agreements have been negotiated on terms consistent with those that would have been negotiated with an unrelated party.

Litigation and Other Contingencies

MTBE  Chevron and many other companies in the petroleum industry have used methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) as a gasoline additive. In October 2008, 59 cases were settled in which the company was a party and which related to the use of MTBE in certain oxygenated gasolines and the alleged seepage of MTBE into groundwater. The terms of this agreement are confidential and not material to the company’s results of operations, liquidity or financial position. Chevron is a party to 37 other pending lawsuits and claims, the majority of which involve numerous other petroleum marketers and refiners. Resolution of these lawsuits and claims may ultimately require the company to correct or ameliorate the alleged effects on the environment of prior release of MTBE by the company or other parties. Additional lawsuits and claims related to the use of MTBE, including personal-injury claims, may be filed in the future. The settlement of the 59 lawsuits did not set any precedents related to standards of liability to be used to judge the merits of the claims, corrective measures required or monetary damages to be assessed for the remaining lawsuits and claims or future lawsuits and claims. As a result, the company’s ultimate exposure related to pending lawsuits and claims is not currently determinable, but could be material to net income in any one period. The company no longer uses MTBE in the manufacture of gasoline in the United States.

     RFG Patent  Fourteen purported class actions were brought by consumers who purchased reformulated gasoline (RFG) from January 1995 through August 2005, alleging that Unocal misled the California Air Resources Board into adopting standards for composition of RFG that overlapped with Unocal’s undisclosed and pending patents. The parties agreed to a settlement that calls for, among other things, Unocal to pay $48 million and for the establishment of a cy pres fund to administer payout of the award. The court approved the final settlement in November 2008.

     Ecuador  Chevron is a defendant in a civil lawsuit before the Superior Court of Nueva Loja in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, brought in May 2003 by plaintiffs who claim to be representatives of certain residents of an area where an oil production consortium formerly had operations. The lawsuit alleges damage to the environment from the oil exploration and production operations, and seeks unspecified damages to fund environmental remediation and restoration of the alleged environmental harm, plus a health monitoring program. Until 1992, Texaco Petroleum Company (Texpet), a subsidiary of Texaco Inc., was a minority member of this consortium with Petroecuador, the Ecuadorian state-owned

oil company, as the majority partner; since 1990, the operations have been conducted solely by Petroecuador. At the conclusion of the consortium and following an independent third-party environmental audit of the concession area, Texpet entered