Rhode Island AG Announced Settlement with Shell, Sunoco, and CITGO over MTBE Contamination

APRIL 11, 2022

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha announced a settlement with several companies in his office’s lawsuit against Shell, Sunoco, and CITGO, as well as a number of other gasoline refineries, for contaminating the state’s soil and groundwater with methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), which is an additive to gasoline that poses threats to human health and the environment and which frequently leaks from underground storage tanks, including in Rhode Island. The AG’s lawsuit claimed that the gas companies knew or should have known the danger posed by the “promotion, design, manufacture, marketing, distribution, supply, sale, handling, spillage, release, and/or storage” of gasoline that contained MTBE. Under the settlement the companies will pay $15 million. The AGO’s MTBE litigation against other companies, including BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Valero, remained ongoing at the time of this settlement.