Puerto Rico DOJ Files Climate Deception Lawsuit Against Big Oil

Puerto Rico filed a lawsuit against major oil and gas companies — including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP — on Monday that seeks to hold them accountable for deceiving the public about the climate damages caused by their products and make them pay for damages caused by climate disasters, such as hurricanes Irma and María.

"For decades, the Defendants, important members of the fossil fuel industry, have deceived consumers and the public about climate change. Since at least the decade of the 1960s, their own scientists have systematically reached the conclusion that fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas contaminants that can have catastrophic consequences for the planet and its inhabitants," alleges the complaint, which was filed in Puerto Rico's First Instance Court.

Domingo Emanuelli Hernández, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Justice, is now the tenth attorney general in the United States to file a climate deception lawsuit against major fossil fuel companies, according to the Center for Climate Integrity. Dozens of municipal and tribal governments have also filed similar lawsuits.

"It is time for [the Defendants] to mitigate the damage they have caused to Puerto Rico and for Puerto Ricans to not be the ones to foot the bill,” said Emmanuelli Hernández in a press release.

The lawsuit is seeking $1 billion for damages caused by extreme weather events enhanced by climate change.

“Puerto Rico has paid a terrible price for Big Oil’s climate lies, and now officials are taking necessary action to hold these corporations accountable and make polluters pay for damages they knowingly caused,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, in a press release.

The lawsuit — like many other climate lawsuits — argues the fossil fuel industry used disinformation campaigns to discredit scientific consensus about climate change, slow down the transition to a low emissions energy economy, and sow doubt about the effects of fossil fuels in the minds of the public, governments, experts, and the media. 

Fossil fuel companies have spent millions of dollars to hide the impact their actions have had on the climate as well as to block climate action, according to a recent U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget report.

“As a result of these lies and deceit by the Defendants and the fossil fuel industry, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has incurred or will incur thousands of millions of dollars in costs to clean disasters induced by climate change, like hurricanes Irma and María, and it is anticipated that [Puerto Rico] will suffer additional and substantial damages in the future, that are even more costly,” alleges the complaint.

Hurricanes Irma and María, which struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, caused an estimated 4,645 deaths and damaged an estimated 1,067,618 homes. The disasters also destroyed numerous roads and decimated the archipelago’s already damaged electrical grid. It took nearly a year to restore power to people who lost electricity because of María. However, the electrical grid is still fragile and mass blackouts are common – in part because of the privatization of the grid in the aftermath of both hurricanes.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the combined damages from Irma and María totaled over $90 billion, which nearly exceeded the archipelago’s entire annual GDP of $104 billion in 2016.

“The human, natural, and economic devastation provoked by hurricanes Irma and María in 2017 are an advance of the grave consequences related to the climate that Puerto Rico faces as a direct result of the illicit deception by the Defendants,” alleges the complaint.

Experts have predicted an “extreme” 2024 Atlantic hurricane season that has already heavily impacted the neighboring nations of Barbados, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, among others. Puerto Rico has already seen flooding and blackouts related to the season.

Over half of Puerto Rico is currently suing oil and gas companies for climate deception. In 2022, sixteen municipalities filed a “first-of-its-kind” federal racketeering lawsuit against fossil fuel companies, arguing the industry conspired to deceive the public about their impact on climate change and that they fueled the damages caused by Hurricane María in 2017. The lawsuit has now ballooned to include 37 municipalities. The Municipality of San Juan, the archipelago’s capital, filed a nearly identical racketeering lawsuit in December of last year.

The companies being sued in this new lawsuit filed by Puerto Rico’s DOJ are ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Chevron Phillips Chemical Puerto Rico Core, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Station Managers of Puerto Rico, TotalEnergies, and TotalEnergies Marketing PR. 

Update: This article has been updated to include remarks from Puerto Rico's Secretary of Justice stated in a press release.

You can find the DOJ's lawsuit below: