Exxon Mobil faces $6.1m pollution fine in US

From Times of India - December 18, 2008

The Exxon Mobil corp faces an additional fine of US$ 6.1 million after reneging on agreements to reduce air pollution from a number of its refineries in the US south and southwest. While Exxon Mobil representatives claim it was causing only minor environmental impacts, the justice department said it "will not tolerate violation of our consent decrees". The previous agreement dated back to 2005, when Exxon Mobil had been fined $7.7 million for a similar offense. Recently, Exxon Mobil broke its own record for biggest US quarterly profit, reporting earnings of $14.83 billion for the July-September period. The previous mark was Exxon Mobil's $11.68 billion profit in the second quarter of this year.

Read Full Article: Exxon Mobil hit with $6.1m pollution fine in US | Pollution | Earth | The Times of India

The Exxon Mobil corp has agreed to pay an additional $6.1m penalty after it reneged on a promise to cut air pollution from four refineries in California, Louisiana and Texas. The payment stems from a 2005 agreement between the government and Exxon Mobil, part of a broader push by Environmental Protection Agency to reduce air pollution from refineries, in which the company agreed pay $14.4m in civil penalties and for community-related environmental projects while also installing new air-pollution controls at the refineries. 

Justice and EPA officials said Wednesday that Exxon Mobil violated the agreement by not adequately reducing smokestack sulfur pollution at the refineries as it had promised. Exxon Mobil said in a statement that the company itself identified the continuing sulfur emission problem and brought the matter to the attention of the EPA. "Environmental impacts associated with this item were very minor," Prem Nair, a spokeswoman for Exxon Mobil's offices in Fairfax, Virginia, wrote in an e-mail message. She said the emission problems have been corrected, and the company now meets the required EPA standard at the refineries in Beaumont and Baytown, Texas; Torrance, California, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

The Justice Department saw the matter as being a bit more serious.