The San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling that it sliced the penalty almost in half.
The punitive damage ruling -- originally $5 billion in 1994 -- has been the subject of a decade-long legal battle between the oil giant and 32,000 fishermen, Alaska natives and property owners who were awarded the damages for the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. REUTERS
Also see this very interesting site about how ExxonMobil funds the climate change sceptiks: http://www.exxonsecrets.org