News & Analysis
March 25, 2025
Big Oil companies are asking President Trump and Congress to help shield them from dozens of lawsuits seeking to hold the companies accountable for their decades-long climate deception.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Hess raised concerns about their legal liability in a White House meeting with President Trump last week, and that oil industry lobbyists are “urging members of Congress to consider granting legal protection for oil companies against” the growing number of cases as they make their way toward trial. According to the Journal, “[t]he fossil-fuel industry has learned from the mammoth lawsuits that clobbered tobacco companies and wants to avoid the same fate.”
Big Oil’s bid to escape accountability underscores the industry’s fear of facing the evidence of their lies in state courts and the critical need for congressional representatives to fight efforts to shield the oil and gas industry from consequences of their climate deception.
Days earlier, CCI and nearly 200 environmental groups called on Democratic leaders in Congress to oppose any attempts from fossil fuel companies and their allies to inject language that provides them legal immunity into fast-moving legislation, just as they attempted to do with COVID-19 relief packages in 2020. The organizations, which included the American Association of Justice, Sunrise Movement, Earthjustice, and more, warned that “the fossil fuel industry and its allies will use the chaos and overreach of the new Trump administration to attempt yet again to pass some form of liability waiver and shield themselves from facing consequences for their decades of pollution and deception.”
Oil companies are facing dozens of lawsuits from California to Connecticut for lying about the harm of their fossil fuel products in order to protect their profits and continue business as usual. The growing wave of lawsuits from communities across the country cite hundreds of internal documents showing that Big Oil companies such as Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and BP knew they were fueling the climate crisis we’re facing today, but chose to fund a decades-long campaign of climate deception to delay advancements toward cleaner and cheaper forms of energy.
In a major blow to Big Oil, twice this year the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear arguments against the cases.
"Big Oil companies know they face massive liability, and we know they'll do everything they can to avoid facing the evidence of their climate deception in court,” said Richard Wiles, President of the Center for Climate Integrity. “Now that the Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to bail out Big Oil, and lawsuits against the companies are getting closer to trial, members of Congress must not give the fossil fuel industry a 'get out of jail free card' for its fraudulent and destructive behavior."
