New Hampshire sues oil firms over MTBE pollution
Date: 09-Oct-03
Country: USA
The state said it filed a lawsuit asking that 22 oil companies, including majors Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM.N and ChevronTexaco Corp. CVX.N , pay for the clean-up of New Hampshire's water supplies contaminated by the fuel additive.
"MTBE has become a significant and costly threat, especially to the underground aquifers that most of us rely upon for drinking water," New Hampshire Attorney General Peter Heed said in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in New Hampshire Superior Court, estimates MTBE is present in roughly 40,000 private drinking water wells across New Hampshire along with about 15 percent of public water supplies.
Citgo Petroleum and Amerada Hess AHC.N , also named in the lawsuit, declined to comment. Other companies named in the suit did not return calls seeking comment.
MTBE is used in roughly a third of the country's gasoline to cut smog emissions, but it has been widely criticized in recent years as a dangerous groundwater pollutant.
Several states, including California, New York, and Connecticut, have legislated bans on MTBE. Energy companies last year settled an MTBE-related suit filed by South Tahoe, California, for $28 million.
"These companies knew of the dangers that adding MTBE to gasoline posed to our water sources," Heed said.
Should it leak out of underground storage tanks the substance has proven to have two serious liabilities - it has a chemical affinity for water and decomposes more slowly than many other products that are found in gasoline.
The lawsuit claims the oil firms were not required to use MTBE to meet clean air standards, but did so because it was cheaper than alternative anti-smog additives.
Below is a list of companies named in the lawsuit:
Amerada Hess Corp.
ChevronTexaco Corp.
Chevron USA, Inc.
Citgo Petroleum Corp.
ConocoPhillips Co. COP.N
El Paso Merchant Energy-Petroleum Co. EP.N
ExxonMobil Corp. XOM.N
Exxon Mobil Oil Corp.
Gulf Oil Limited Partnership
Irving Oil Corp.
Irving Oil Limited
Lyondell Chemical Co. LYO.N
Motiva Enterprises, LLC SHEL.L RD.AS
Shell Oil Co. SHEL.L RD.AS
Statoil Marketing and Trading, Inc.
Sunoco Inc. SUN.N
Texaco Refining and Marketing, Inc.
Ultramar Energy, Inc. VLO.N
Ultramar Ltd
Unocal Corp. UCL.N
Valero Energy Corp. VLO.N
Valero Marketing and Supply Co.
