Despite spills and air pollution, fossil fuel companies award CEOs for environmental records

It was the worst oil spill Marathon Petroleum had seen in years. A crack in a 60-year-old underground pipeline released 1,400 barrels of diesel fuel into an Indiana creek, staining the banks of the waterway and threatening a population of endangered freshwater mussels.  The incident barely registered, however, in the performance reviews of Marathon’s top executives, who earn part of their annual bonus by meeting environmental goals. Because these reviews account for the company’s number of significant oil spills in a year — not the total volume of oil — the Indiana spill counted as just one of 23 incidents in 2018. The way Marathon evaluated its executives, 2018 was the company’s best environmental performance in at least eight years. The board of directors awarded chief executive Gary Heminger $272,251 for “excellence in environmental, personal safety and process safety improvement." - Washington Post