Clock ticking for Exxon to show Massachusetts is hiding something

Exxon has a small chance to show Massachusetts is withholding information related to alleged hypocrisy – that the State sued oil companies over climate change but ignored its own emissions rules.

The case in Boston state court sought public records that were eventually turned over. They showed regulators failed to report the annual greenhouse gas emissions of state vehicle fleets, even as Massachusetts was one of dozens of local and state governments to sue companies like Exxon and Chevron over global warming.

The documents revealed Massachusetts never complied with regulations the Department of Environmental Protection was charged with enforcing under a 2008 law. 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.

Turning over those records should have ended the case, Massachusetts argued. But Exxon insists there is more to find, and last week Associate Justice David Deakin allowed limited discovery over 60 days to show there is a reason to think that.

It is necessary to “develop a factual record on the narrow question whether the Department has established that it has made the thorough and diligent search necessary to satisfy the requirements of the public records law,” Deakin wrote.

If Exxon fails, that will end the case, as Deakin dismissed equal-protection claims and found the request for an injunction was mooted by the State turning over its records.

Documents and depositions of state officials show no emissions 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 will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

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 agencies are 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.