Audrey Streb
Contributor
Puerto Rico withdrew its $1 billion climate lawsuit against the oil and gas industry on Friday following the Trump administration’s move to block two states from seeking legal damages for similar alleged environmental damages.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, the territory’s government said in the notice that it “voluntarily dismisses this entire case,” with no further elaboration as to why. President Donald Trump has repeatedly condemned state-level climate policies that impact domestic energy production, and on April 30, his Department of Justice (DOJ) filed two separate lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan after both states considered filing similar complaints against the oil and gas industry.
“This dismissal adds to the growing momentum among federal and state courts holding that states and municipalities cannot use state laws to sue over climate change,” Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP, counsel for Chevron Corporation wrote in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “These claims are precluded and preempted by federal law and must be dismissed under clear U.S. Supreme Court precedent.” (RELATED: Puerto Rico Hits Oil Industry With $1 Billion Lawsuit Over ‘Climate Change’ Effects)
The notice to dismiss the suit was filed “without prejudice.”
The lawsuit, originally filed in July 2024 by Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Justice Domingo Emanuelli Hernández, alleged BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and a number of other energy companies engaged in using unfair and dishonest trade practices by allegedly failing to provide warnings about the environmental risks of fossil fuel use, according to an E&E News translation.
Puerto Rico’s move to drop the case comes just days after the Trump administration took action against both Michigan and Hawaii, which had previously announced that they intended to sue the fossil fuel industry. The Trump administration claimed that the states were engaging in “extraordinary extraterritorial reach.” (RELATED: Trump Admin Sues To Block Blue States From Taking Fossil Fuel Companies To Court Over Climate Change)
Trump, taking a firm stance against state-led climate initiatives that may inhibit domestic energy production, signed an executive order on April 8 directing the attorney general to “identify all State and local laws, regulations, causes of action, policies, and practices” that might be “unconstitutional” or “burdening” energy production.
“An affordable and reliable domestic energy supply is essential to the national and economic security of the United States, as well as our foreign policy,” the order reads. “Simply put, Americans are better off when the United States is energy dominant.”
U.S. President Donald Trump holds up an executive orders about classroom discipline in the Oval Office at the White House on April 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Hawaii filed its legal complaint against several large oil companies just hours after the DOJ filed its suit against the state. Hawaiian officials condemned the the DOJ’s lawsuit in a press release shared May 1.
“We have an obligation to the people of Hawaii, to do everything in our power to fight deceptive practices from these fossil fuel companies that erode Hawaii’s public health, natural resources and economy,” Hawaii Attorney General Lopez said in the release. “The federal lawsuit filed by the Justice Department attempts to block Hawaii from holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for deceptive conduct that caused climate change damage to Hawaii,” he continued.”
The American Energy Institute (AEI) sent a letter asking Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón to drop the lawsuit on April 25, writing that “climate lawfare threatens to derail your administration’s common-sense approach. The climate plaintiffs are advancing a fundamentally neocolonial agenda. They are steering Puerto Rico toward a ‘green’ energy future it did not choose — one that ignores the basic needs of its people, who simply require cheap and reliable electricity.”
“The American Energy Institute applauds the withdrawal of Puerto Rico’s climate lawsuit,” founder and CEO of AEI Jason Isaac wrote in a statement to the DCNF. “This decisive step — taken shortly after our correspondence with Governor González-Colón — shows she’s putting Puerto Rico’s energy needs ahead of fringe climate ideology. By rejecting the alarmist lawfare agenda, the Governor is backing President Trump’s energy dominance strategy and standing up for affordable, reliable power for her constituents. It’s a big win for energy sanity and the people of Puerto Rico.”
The Puerto Rico Department of Justice did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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If YOU are blaming the use of FF for causing Climate Change damages AND YOU are using FF energy to your benefit, they YOU are partially responsible for those damages you claim.
So … Go Sue Yourself!
I’d change the middle word, but yes.
They both do start with “S”
Not the word I was thinking of, though I suspect the share the same ending.
Nope, it begins with “F” and ends in “k”
I have never understood how any judicial system can allow lawsuits by individual governments over something global like fossil fuel “pollution”; nor how businesses can be blamed for selling what the governments themselves depend on. It’s even dumber than suing gun manufacturers for selling legal products which a consumer misuses.
The very first lawsuit should have been throw out on its first day in court, and the plaintiffs found in contempt of court for wasting everybody’s time. Or something like that.
Any state that sues fossil fuel providers for CAGW should immediately have all deliveries of fossil fuels halted until the matter is settled. The fossil fuel companies created the fuel they did not force the states to buy and burn the fuel. All electricity generated from fossil fuels should also be shut off.
Time for the named plaintiffs, all private oil companies not state-owned companies, to stop all deliveries to Hawaii. Immediately. It’s a small state and they can probably afford the loss in revenue. Let Hawaii buy their oil from state-owned oil companies in Venezuela, Russia, and the Middle East, and explain to their citizens why their fuel prices went up drastically and why they’re reliant on rogue governments for their oil.
In addition, get a court ordered injunction to stop deliveries, refinement (if in State), drilling (if in State), and production (if in State) so the oil companies are not liable for the consequences of these rogue State lawfare.
So, now, are BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and the other energy companies going to sue Puerto Rico for costs?
They should, but not just stop with Puerto Rico. The slight problem with the above Daily Caller article is that it speaks of the Puerto Rico lawsuit against the fossil fuel industry as though there is only one lawsuit; readers are thereby left unaware that it was not the only one. There were (past tense now) actually three ‘Puerto Rico’ lawfare lawsuits filed against Big Oil.
1) Municipalities of Puerto Rico v Exxon — my December 2022 dissection of that one is here. It plagiarized parts of its accusations from other lawsuits filed by the supposedly unrelated San Francisco law firm Sher Edling. Complicating the entire problem of plagiarism within the “ExxonKnew” lawfare effort, the Oregon County of Multnomah v Exxon is basically a plagiarized copy of Muni. of Puerto Rico. I detailed that problem In my Part 1 here. My Part 2 details how Multnomah made the monstrous mistake of amending their lawsuit to add our man Art Robinson (a private citizen, not an oil company) and his Oregon Petition Project as a defendant.
2) San Juan v Puerto Rico — this one was in the news just recently, the Washington Free Beacon‘s Thomas Catenacci reported how U.S. district judge Aida Delgado-Colon saw how this particular lawsuit was an outright plagiarized copy of Muni. of Puerto Rico. I detailed that whole amusing situation in my April 24th WUWT guest post; this lawsuit was not an isolated copy ‘n paste effort by a long shot.
3) Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico v. Exxon — this one is the one in the above Daily Caller article, it was the Sher Edling’s johnny-come-lately effort to jump into the ‘Puerto Rico suing Big Oil’ act. I dissected it here in August 2024, it was little more than their same traveling circus show going from one gullible prosecutor location to the next across the country.
My educated guess is that the Sher Edling firm probably didn’t want Judge Delgado-Colon nosing around in it to see if there were any problems with it. The reason why these lawsuits should all be dismissed is not simply that their claims about climate science are faulty: the accusations within these about the industry running disinformation campaigns employing skeptic climate scientist ‘shills’ are 100% totally without merit.
Have not any of these court cases required the plaintiffs to prove that the oil companies have caused damage and harm rather than the blanket assumption that they are?
We have an obligation to the people of the United States to do everything in our power to fight deceptive practices from these leftist ruling elites and their cabal of leftist activists that use lawfare to impose destructive leftist policies that the voters did not vote for nor approve, that erode the freedom of U.S. citizens, restrict their access to inexpensive energy, lock up natural resources, arbitrarily inflate consumer prices for energy, and destroy the economy.
You left out command economics that ban people from free choice.
O please, let the Hawaiian fools continue with their folly. Let them win the case. Last time I looked Hawaii was an archipelago with no or little fossil fuel production of its own. A refusal by companies to continue supplying a commodity for which they are being punished could do wonders to the sanity of the political classes.
Just out of curiosity, are there any thermal power plants in Hawaii?
I’m just a layman, but it seems like at least one of the islands could be a good spot to tap into the lava.
How about:
Sue fast food companies like McDonald’s for selling food that might cause heart attacks.
Sue sugar and corn syrup companies for selling a product that could cause diabetes.
Sue car manufacturers for producing a product resulting in the deaths of thousands every year.
The possibilities are endless, and equally absurd.
The real kicker is that oil companies and their product have absolutely nothing to do with so-called “Climate Change”. Not only are the lawfare suits against them dumb, but they are based on total fantasy.
For every “research report” that “identifies CO2 is the cause of temperature rise” prepared by an oil company researcher, there are 10 more that prove the opposite. So, by cherry picking and selecting snippets from the text, they somehow “prove Exxon knew.”
I read one report. I saw the deliberate highlighting to lead the reader to the selected passages, but when one reads the whole report one finds all sorts of caveats on the research validity.
So yes. Total fantasy.
Bingo!
“Dad, why are they suing the oil companies? Don’t we need oil?”
“Because that’s where the money is, son. That’s where the money is”.
Simple shakedown