Monday, October 26, 2009

$105 million was ordered from Exxon to NYC

Summary: A 105 million dollar punishemnt fee was ordered by a federal jury from Exxon to NYC. The fine was ordered to treat the gasoline addctive that can contaiminate the undergroud water in NYC. The addctive that NYC reported is methyl tertiary butyk ether, also know as MTBE, which is used to increase gasoline's octane level to reduce air pollution. Royal Dutch Shell, BP Plc, Chevron Corp, Citgo Petroleum Corp, Hess Corp and Sunoco Inc tried to settle a 15 million payment with NYC earlier. And Exxon is seeking for legal options now. It was a news posted Yahoo on Oct 19th. Please check orginal article here.

Commnets: This article reminded me aout the relationship between water and energy that Dr. Webber mentioned in his article. We always valued more about energy, since it might bring more profits in short term. But we mostly ignored the importance of water . We can't live without water, and there is no alternatives for that, but we can always invent alternative energy form. Specially, in this case, NYC is the most population intnesive area in the whole world, and rely mostly on underground water for its daily life. Pollution to the undergraoup water is extermely dangerous. So, I think those big oil company which have it all need think more about the side effects that energy exploring might bring, and think more about long-term effects. Moreover, we need to think the importance of water, and put that in the list of environmental protection, and maybe set an agency to control the water qualties.

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