Beyond its production update, Chevron made headlines on Wednesday as it once again won permission from Brazilian regulators to drill in their pre-salt fields off the coast of Rio.

FORBES: Chevron's Production And Refining Down While Brazil Authorizes Ultra-Deepwater Drilling Again

Chevron has never made a pretense of playing nice with the U.S. lawyers suing it over pollution left over from when its Texaco unit was drilling for oil in the jungles of Ecuador.

FORBES: Chevron Says Ecuador Pollution Records Fabricated

This week Chevron announced that it had made a nice oil discovery at the Moccasin prospect in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

FORBES: Chevron And BP Reveal Big New Deepwater Finds In The Gulf Of Mexico

Certainly Kaplan has made some devastating rulings in favor of Chevron, including forcing Donziger to turn over hundreds of thousands of pages of internal documents revealing plaintiff strategy, disputes among the lawyers, and funding from outside sources.

FORBES: Chevron Plaintiffs Launch Nuclear Option, Seek Judge's Removal

Chevron is working with national labs like Lawrence Livermore, applying advances made in nuclear weapons simulation to seismic rendering.

FORBES: Magazine Article

But Ecuador cites a report made by an investigator hired by the plaintiffs that suggests Borja is improperly linked to Chevron.

FORBES: Ecuador Turns Tables On Chevron In Spill Case