Oil and gas industry sees risk as climate lawsuits grow
There has been an explosion in the number of climate lawsuits against oil, gas, and coal companies in recent years. As companies cling to fossil fuels, a new report finds that the oil industry’s legal problems are rising.
The number of climate lawsuits against the largest oil, gas, and coal companies in the world has nearly tripled since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, with the legal woes facing the fossil fuel industry continuing to mount as the climate crisis worsens.
There are 86 active climate lawsuits against 122 of the largest fossil fuel companies, which account for nearly three-quarters of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, a new report from Oil Change International and Zero Carbon Analytics found. The pace of litigation has accelerated rapidly in recent years.
“No major oil and gas company is pledging to do the bare minimum to prevent climate chaos, so communities are taking them to court,” David Tong, industry campaign manager at OCI, said in a statement.
OCI research has found that around 60 percent of existing fossil fuel reserves would need to be left in the ground — unproduced — for the world to stay on track to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The companies targeted the most by climate litigation include ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. ExxonMobil and Shell alone are each the subject of more than 40 lawsuits. The study only looked at fossil fuel producers, and did not include companies involved in the sprawling oil, gas, and coal supply chains.
Tong said that there are three categories of lawsuit that have increased significantly over the past decade. Cases seeking compensation for climate damages have grown by 38 percent, while cases alleging misleading advertising have increased by 16 percent. Finally, cases aiming for emissions reductions have expanded by 12 percent.
“What these cases are about is that they’re saying polluters should pay if they contributed a big amount to climate change,” said Noah Walker-Crawford, a research fellow at the Grantham Institute of the London School of Economics. “So, potentially, these cases could be about very large amounts of money just because of the extent of the impacts we’re already seeing around the world.”
He added that none of the cases have yet been successfully litigated, so no major legal precedent has been established, “but we may see that in the future.”
One of the cases that has proceeded the farthest is a case involving a Peruvian farmer suing German energy company RWE. In Peru, glaciers are retreating because of rising temperatures, which has increased flooding risk. Saul Luciano Lliuya, the farmer, has filed a lawsuit in a German court against RWE, seeking damages and compensation for the cost of flood defense because of the German utility’s long history of burning coal.
The case is moving forward and is currently in the evidentiary phase.
“For those of us directly impacted by the climate crisis, the courts offer a glimmer of hope,” Lliuya said in a statement. “People like me are in court because our livelihoods are at serious risk and we are asking judges to hold the fossil fuel companies responsible.”
Walker-Crawford noted that these cases take years to work their way through the courts, but one factor aiding the plaintiff is that attribution science has improved substantially since the case was originally filed back in 2015. Attribution science can link volumes of historic emissions to specific climate damages, and it has improved to such a degree that the legal challenges have grown more formidable. “As we see the evidence improving, that’s providing a much better basis for these sorts of cases,” Walker-Crawford said.
Another example of a case using attribution science is one filed by Multnomah County in the U.S. state of Oregon, which is seeking $52 billion in damages related to a catastrophic heat wave in 2021 that killed hundreds of people. The case targets ExxonMobil and an array of oil lobbyists and trade associations. Gas Outlook reported on the case when it was filed in June 2023.
Legal strategies one tool in a toolbox
The oil and gas industry will continue to face a tumultuous legal landscape, with the pace of lawsuits accelerating with each passing year.
Justine Ripoll, a campaign manager at Notre Affaire à Tous, a French NGO that has sued the French state, said that the lawsuits are about both the past and the present.
“Taking Big Oils to court is also about their historic responsibility in the current situation. As we have known for quite some time now, these companies knew about climate change almost 50 years ago, and decided in the meantime to manipulate science, to lobby against climate policies, and nowadays to make us believe that they are in transition,” Ripoll told reporters on a press call.
She added that the latter point is the “central issue” of the cases involving emissions reductions. “These companies are not in transition, and their trajectories are not aligned with the targets of the Paris agreement,” she said.
She said that bringing legal cases against both the oil industry and state actors are complimentary strategies, and reinforce broader climate advocacy and policymaking, forcing the state to take action to require emissions reductions from the industry.
Walker-Crawford agreed, saying that the lack of progress on climate policy has spurred more action in the courtroom. “One of the reasons we have this litigation around ‘loss and damage’ is because there’s been a real lack of political progress on the issue over the past few decades,” he said, referring to international financial instruments to help developing countries pay for adaptation amidst worsening climate disasters. “So, in a sense, the reason we have cases like the case against RWE, it’s kind of a sign of desperation of people affected by these issues.”
By the same token, more legal action is pressuring governments to take stronger climate action. He pointed to the international climate negotiations in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt in 2022, which established a “loss and damage” fund. With the proliferation of lawsuits, leaders felt pressured to finally take action and establish a loss and damage fund.
“Court action within existing legal frameworks will not solve the climate crisis alone. But it is a key tool in the toolbox to bring these companies to account for the harm they are causing to people, communities, and our common home,” Tong said.
When asked if he expects the pace of litigation to continue to grow, Tong said: “Absolutely.”