Exxon station
BOSTON - Massachusetts has never followed regulations requiring state agencies to report the annual greenhouse gas emissions of their vehicle fleets, even as it sues Exxon Mobil for failing to disclose the global warming effects of the fuels it produces.
After initially stonewalling Exxon Mobil’s public records request, Massachusetts turned over documents showing it never complied with regulations the Department of Environmental Protection was charged with enforcing under Global Warming Solutions Act of 2008. Those regulations, detailed in a report by the CommonWealth Beacon, require Massachusetts agencies that operate more than 30 vehicles to compile a variety of statistics including CO2 emissions and post the results on a public website.
Documents and depositions of state officials show no such reports were compiled between 2017, when the regulations went into effect, and 2024, and DEP officials never demanded them. Massachusetts fought the release of the records, arguing a judge had barred the company from getting evidence from the DEP in a separate, long-running climate lawsuit against Exxon Mobil that is part of nationwide litigation that could be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“DEP’s conduct makes a mockery of the public records law,” said Exxon Mobil in a November brief. Massachusetts “deliberately violated one law to cover up its dereliction of another.”
Massachusetts has moved to dismiss the public-records lawsuit as moot, saying it has turned over all responsive records. But Exxon Mobil says the state is still holding back information. Massachusetts assailed the claim as “slanderous.”
The Global Warming Solutions Act mandated broad disclosures of global warming gases by businesses and utilities and the DEP followed up with a 2017 regulation imposing similar demands on state agencies including the transportation department, which operates fleets of buses and other vehicles. The law requires DEP to collect the information, but in a deposition, Sharon Weber, a deputy director at DEP, said the state’s executive branch failed to respond to the very first request for compliance records.
“There was no enforcement,” she said.
An attorney for Exxon Mobil with Sidley Austin filed the public records request in January and DEP employees began compiling information until DEP General Counsel Ben Ericsson and his counterpart at the DEP’s parent agency discovered the lawyer represented Exxon Mobil. When they found out the oil company was involved, they denied the request, citing the judge’s order in the state’s climate lawsuit.
“Discovery in this matter shows that DEP and EEA concocted the pretext only after their lawyers recognized that responding to the request would reveal that DEP and EEA had failed to comply with DEP’s climate regulations,” Exxon Mobil said.
Then-Attorney General and now-Gov. Maura Healy sued Exxon Mobil in 2019, claiming the company misled investors and the public by downplaying the risks of global warming and the role its products play in it. Exxon Mobil failed in its bid to dismiss the case on First Amendment grounds and has fought to obtain information from the state including its analysis of how Exxon Mobil’s advertising and investor communications compare with other companies.
A fundamental claim in this and other climate suits is that Exxon Mobil misled consumers into burning more gasoline, diesel and natural gas than they otherwise would have, had they known the truth. Exxon Mobil’s “deceptive statements and omissions” have “distorted the market for energy products,” the lawsuit said.
Massachusetts is one of the biggest consumers of those fuels in the state, and the law requires it to report consumption and greenhouse gas emissions as well as how it is progressing toward a 50% reduction from 1990 levels by 2030. The state’s response to Exxon Mobil’s public records request suggests no such data exist.
In the climate suit, Exxon Mobil has filed a motion to compel the state to identify the allegedly false statements it has made. The state responded it would be “unduly burdensome” and require “extensive analysis” to identify the statements it considers false.
After investigating the case for nine years, Exxon Mobil said, “it offends the basic precepts of fairness to be repeatedly accused of falsity and then be told the Commonwealth has no earthly idea what that term means.”
