The U.S. Department of Justice and the EPA have blown the lid off CITGO's failure to put a lid on some of its oil tanks. The DOJ won criminal convictions against the petroleum company for allowing the carcinogen benzene to escape from its oil tanks at a refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas.

For this Clean Air Act violation, the company faces fines of up to $500,000 per count or twice the gross economic gain (whichever is greater) and five years of probation, according to the DOJ.

The same tanks also look like a pond from above, and several protected migratory birds flew into the tanks and died. For this, CITGO was convicted of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA)

We consumers need to track the performance of the companies where we spend our money to make sure that they are acting sustainably. While perfection isn't likely in any multinational corporation (especially in the oil business), criminal convictions indicate that this was a willful violation of the law.