Dive Brief:

  • California is billing Big Oil for its greenwashing practices, asking a group of six corporations — including ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and the American Petroleum Institute — to give up “illegally obtained profits,” according to an amended complaint filed Monday.
  • The complaint, filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta in the San Francisco County Superior Court, is part of an ongoing lawsuit he initiated last year. The state seeks to hold API and five of the world’s largest oil companies accountable for “falsely or misleadingly portraying their fossil fuel products and themselves as environmentally friendly [or] climate-friendly.”
  • Bonta’s June 10 complaint showcases additional examples of the defendants’ conduct that could be considered greenwashing and includes a request to seek “disgorgement of profits” gained through their “illegal conduct” under Assembly Bill 1366. The bill, which took effect Jan. 1, authorizes the court to award remedy of forfeiture of any profits from illegal or wrongful acts for cases tried under “specified false advertising and unfair competition laws.”

Dive Insight:

Bonta filed the original lawsuit in September 2023, which alleged the six corporations participated in a “decades-long campaign of deception” by attempting to mask the connection between climate change and the combustion of fossil fuels, which ultimately contributed to climate-related disasters throughout California.

In his suit, the state attorney general blamed the widespread combustion of fossil fuels for bringing about extreme climate change in the state last year, including extensive flooding, droughts, wildfires, storms and unusual weather changes.

“Oil and gas company executives have known for decades that reliance on fossil fuels would cause these catastrophic results, but they suppressed that information from the public and policymakers by actively pushing out disinformation on the topic,” Bonta wrote in his suit. “Their deception was rewarded with tremendous revenues and profits, while causing a delayed societal response to global warming. And their deception continues to this day.”

The suit also provided evidence of how the five oil companies collectively promoted their fossil fuel products through API, which the state alleged also played a role in the false advertising of oil and natural gas.

The attorney general said the request to seek legally mandated repayment of “illegally obtained profits” from the oil companies under AB 1366 will financially support Californians who have been victims of consumer fraud, per the amended complaint. If the companies are found to have “violated the law and orders disgorgement” by the court, they will be required to give up the profits they obtained through their greenwashing conduct, according to the provisions laid out in the Unfair Competition and False Advertising bill — which Bonta sponsored last year.

“We will continue to vigorously prosecute this matter and ensure that Big Oil pays to abate the harm they have caused, and we will recover ill-gotten gains that will benefit Californians,” Bonta said in a press release Monday.