Exxon Wants $1 Million Fine for 2011 Yellowstone Oil Spill Reduced Again

From:  Inside Climate News 

By Elizabeth Douglass, InsideClimate News

The challenge by the world's second-most-valuable company reinforces its reputation for protracted legal fights over penalties and court judgments.

Montana residents and local environmentalists gathered in July 2013 to demand that Exxon pay its then $1.7 million fine for its Yellowstone River oil spill. Since then, federal regulators have lowered the fine to $1 million, which Exxon is challenging. Credit: Northern Plains Resource Council

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More than three and a half years after an ExxonMobil pipeline spilled 63,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River, the world's second-most-valuable company is still fighting regulators over being assessed a $1 million fine.

Exxon last month attacked the legal underpinnings of the government's case, which stems from the July 2011 rupture of the Silvertip Pipeline near Laurel, Mont. The oil giant argued that it complied with federal regulations and that pipeline regulators overstepped their authority in interpreting the legal requirements. It also said that all but one of the violations should be dropped and that the government should, at a minimum, "significantly reduce" the penalties.

Alexis Bonogofsky, whose family farm was inundated with oil from the spill, thinks the penalty is already too low.  MORE