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US Judge slaps ExxonMobil with US$14.2M penalty for illegal flaring
– Found company violated environmental laws more than 3,600 times
By Kiana Wilburg
A section of the ExxonMobil refinery at Baytown, Texas.
Kaieteur News – While Guyana continues to give ExxonMobil much leverage to ignore its laws and pollute its airspace with toxic chemicals that are released from the burning of 16 million cubic feet of gas per day, no-nonsense American environmental groups are showing the world that they refuse to allow such practices to go unpunished.
On Tuesday for example, ExxonMobil Corporation was slapped with a US$14.25M penalty by U.S. District Court Judge, David Hittner, for polluting Texas communities via illegal flaring at its sprawling 3,400-acre Baytown complex, which houses a refinery and chemical plant. Tens of thousands of people live within three miles of the said complex.
The matter, which was taken to court by Environment Texas and Sierra Club, is one that ExxonMobil fought for 11 years with a series of legal manoeuvrings. The oil giant did not want to take responsibility for the violations of the Federal Clean Air Act on 3,651 days over a period of eight years.
It should be noted that this is the second ruling to be handed down on this case. The first came after Judge Hittner had held a three week trial in 2014 and ruled that the oil giant should pay an almost US$20M fine. The Judge had found that Exxon was responsible for the pollution from the Baytown complex between 2005 and 2013, as alleged in the lawsuit initially filed in 2010 by the Sierra Club and Environment Texas.
ExxonMobil, which quickly flexed its legal muscles, rushed to the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the penalty. It succeeded in this regard but the Court of Appeals still ordered Hittner to determine which violations of the Clean Air Act specifically caused harm to members of the organizations living near Exxon’s Baytown operations.
In his new opinion, Judge Hittner, found that the environmental groups had proven at trial that thousands of instances of illegal flaring and unauthorized releases of pollutants causing smoke, chemical odors, ground-level ozone, and respiratory problems were “fairly traceable” to injuries suffered by their members. In support of his penalty assessment, Judge Hittner pointed to the fact that Exxon had committed more than one violation every single day for a period of eight years.
“We are extremely pleased that Judge Hittner has, once again, assessed a civil penalty against Exxon that is larger than any penalty ever imposed in a Clean Air Act citizen enforcement suit,” said National Environmental Law Centre senior attorney, Josh Kratka, part of the legal team representing Environment Texas and Sierra Club.
Also commenting on the victory was Neil Carman, Clean Air Programme Director for Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter. He said, “Exxon’s Baytown refinery-chemical complex is the largest polluter on the Houston Ship Channel impacting the air quality of hundreds of thousands of citizens. Exxon Baytown still needs to clean up its act and do more to create cleaner air in the Houston area.”
The groups are represented by the National Environmental Law Centre; attorney David Nicholas of Newton, Massachusetts and Houston attorneys Philip Hilder and Will Graham.
Sierra Club has approximately 24,000 members in Texas who are protecting parks and wild-lands and building a clean energy future to protect human health and natural resources.
Environment Texas advocates for clean air, clean water, and preservation of Texas’ natural areas on behalf of approximately 5,000 members statewide.
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