Exxon Mobil Corporation’s lonely environmental battle with New York City over the fuel additive MTBE ended with a whimper on Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear arguments that a federal jury and two lower courts should have rejected the case. The high court’s order leaves in place a $104.7 million verdict against Exxon, and if you believe the company’s lawyers, it could unleash waves of “abusive and speculative litigation.”
Exxon and other oil companies began adding MTBE (Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether) to fuel supplies more than 20 years ago, in response to amendments to the Clean Air Act that mandated a reformulated gasoline program. But while MTBE (like ethanol) can curb tailpipe emissions, state and federal regulators soon determined that MTBE can also contaminate groundwater all too easily from leaky storage tanks, making water unfit to consume. New York state banned MTBE in 2004, and Congress ended its additives program the following year.
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