News & Analysis
January 15, 2026
Big Oil and its allies have spent the past year quietly building a campaign urging Congress to give fossil fuel companies total legal immunity from the growing wave of climate deception lawsuits filed by communities demanding accountability for their climate lies. As of this week, they’re saying the quiet part out loud.
The American Petroleum Institute (API), the nation’s largest oil and gas trade association, said this week that one of its top 2026 priorities is to stop “state climate lawsuits.”
In his speech at its annual State of American Energy event, API President and CEO Mike Sommers claimed that the U.S. has reached “public consensus” on the need for increased oil production that is currently being “blocked by red tape, delay and endless lawsuits.”
The declaration comes after numerous news outlets have reported that the fossil fuel industry has been lobbying Congress for immunity from climate accountability lawsuits filed by 11 attorneys general and dozens of municipal and tribal governments across the U.S. While Big Oil defendants have been fighting to block and delay the cases at every turn, lawsuits from communities across the country continue to move through the courts and closer to discovery and trial.
“Big Oil is openly asking Congress for a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card because fossil fuel companies are desperate to avoid facing the evidence of their climate lies in court,” CCI President Richard Wiles said in response to API’s priorities. “Congress must make clear that any proposal to strip Americans of their right to hold corporations accountable for the damage they cause when they lie to the public about the harms of their products will be dead on arrival.”
Big Oil’s push to put itself above the law is already in the works. Last year, 16 Republican attorneys general proposed creating a “liability shield” for fossil fuel companies modeled on a 2005 law protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits, and state-level immunity bills for the fossil fuel industry have already been introduced this year in Utah and Oklahoma.
These efforts are not without pushback. A Congressional appropriations bill introduced last year originally included language that would prohibit the District of Columbia from using any funds to enforce its consumer protection laws “against oil and gas companies for environmental claims,” clearly targeting D.C.’s ongoing climate accountability lawsuit against ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and other oil majors. However, the latest version of the bill no longer includes the restrictive language that aimed to bar D.C. communities from accessing the courts.
“I think anyone in America who breathes the air around them and also believes in corporate accountability ought to be very concerned about these types of end-runs against accountability,” Jay Inslee, the former governor of Washington state, told The Guardian.
