Chevron Corp. will cut 2,000 jobs in 2010 and sell some overseas operations as it revamps its struggling refinery, marketing and transportation operations.

Chevron Corp. is planning to sell a U.K. oil refinery, cull 2,000 jobs and sell assets in the Caribbean and Central America to stanch losses from its fuel-making business. Chevron may also cut down its operations at a refinery in Hawaii, according to a presentation that Mike Wirth, executive vice president of global downstream, is scheduled to deliver to analysts on March 9 in New York. The refining unit lost $613 million during the final three months of 2009 as fuel demand dipped, hindering Chief Executive Officer John Watsons goal of generating returns of at least 10% from each plant.

Chevron Corp. will be forced to explain to a U.S. federal judge this Wednesday why it believes it has the right to take the seven-year Ecuador environmental case (Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco) to a closed-door binding arbitration where the rainforest communities cannot appear, in apparent violation of the company's previous promises that it would litigate the case in its requested forum of Ecuador. The trial judge in the environmental case, where Chevron faces damages of up to $27 billion for allegedly poisoning an area the size of Rhode Island, has yet to rule in what experts believe is one of the most extensively litigated environmental trials ever. Because Chevron expects to lose the trial due to indisputable scientific evidence proving extensive contamination, it is trying to use the arbitration to force Ecuador's government to quash the case before it can end, according to representatives of the rainforest communities. Chevron is trying to abandon the trial even though over the last seven years the parties have produced more than 64,000 chemical sampling results, conducted 103 court-supervised inspections of former Chevron well sites scattered throughout the rainforest, and created a trial record than runs to more than 200,000 pages. The hearing before Judge Sand will examine whether Chevron should be enjoined from initiating a private arbitration against Ecuador's government under the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty. In what the plaintiffs describe as a 'radical' maneuver that undermines the rule of law, Chevron claims the trade treaty gives it the right to force Ecuador's government to order its courts to extinguish the Aguinda case on the grounds Chevron has been treated unfairly in the trial even though Chevron has yet to actually lose.