Lansing — Attorney General Dana Nessel on Friday filed a federal antitrust suit against the nation’s largest oil companies, arguing the businesses had acted as a “cartel” to restrain trade and slow renewable energy competition and growth.
The result, the attorney general argued in a statement, has been “artificially high home and transportation energy costs.” The state is “facing an energy affordability crisis” because of that restrained competition, Nessel said.
“These out-of-control costs are not the result of natural economic inflation, but due to the greed of these corporations who prioritized their own profit and marketplace dominance over competition and consumer savings,” the attorney general said.
The companies, the department said, have been aware of the negative effects fossil fuel dominance would have on consumers and the natural environment and have hidden that.
Over decades, the companies, through trade organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute, have coordinated an industry-wide effort to delay energy transition, leaving Michigan residents with high prices and few choices when it comes to energy alternatives, the department said.
The suit, which has not yet been assigned to a federal judge in western Michigan’s U.S. District Court, seeks a permanent injunction on the oil companies’ alleged collusion, attorney fees and costs, trebled damages for all harms suffered by the state and its residents and the repayment of all profits obtained as a result of anticompetitive behavior.
The American Petroleum Institute, a named defendant in the case, called the lawsuit “baseless” and part of a coordinated effort to attack fossil fuels.
“These baseless lawsuits are a coordinated campaign against an industry that powers everyday life, drives America’s economy, and is actively reducing emissions,” Ryan Meyers, senior vice president and general counsel for API, said in a statement. “We continue to believe that energy policy belongs in Congress, not a patchwork of courtrooms.”
The Sierra Club Michigan commended the lawsuit in a Friday statement.
“In Michigan, these companies have used their outsized political influence to preserve the status quo and pave the way for a wave of energy-intensive data center projects across the state, even as renewable energy remains the cheapest source of new power and what Michiganders deserve,” said Tim Minotas, legislative and political director for Sierra Club Michigan.
State Rep. Pauline Wendzel, chairwoman of the House Energy Committee, criticized the lawsuit, calling it an attempt to appease climate activists rather than serve Michigan residents. The factors raising energy costs, Wendzel said, are not the oil and gas companies but green energy mandates passed by the Democratic-led Legislature in 2023.
“Now the arsonists are donning firefighter helmets, blaming industry for the crisis they created,” Wendzel said.
Nessel’s filing comes nearly two years after the department, in May 2024, sought proposals from attorneys and law firms willing to pursue the litigation against the fossil fuel industry. The department eventually hired Sher Edling LLP, DiCello Levitt LLP and Hausfeld LLP.
The agencies are working on contingency, meaning that the only compensation the firms would receive would be a share of the potential relief or settlement gained through the litigation.
The suit, filed in the Western U.S. District Court of Michigan, names BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute as defendants.
It alleges the companies broke state and federal antitrust laws by coordinating efforts to nix renewable energy products; suppressed information on fossil fuel risks and their alternatives; intimidated watchdogs and public officials; manipulated patents and used litigation in order to hinder competitors; and used trade association campaigns to divert capital away from renewable energy projects.
The complaint argues the companies had information dating back to 1980 on the potential harms of fossil fuels, but colluded to protect fossil fuel dominance in two markets: transportation energy, such as gasoline, and energy products for heating and cooling buildings.
The companies, Nessel argued in the suit, suppressed innovation and investment in electric vehicles, renewable energy and EV infrastructure, increasing costs for Michigan residents and causing the United States to fall behind China “in the race to pioneer cheaper and cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels.”
“In the world that would have existed but for defendants’ conspiracy, EVs would not be a fringe technology or a luxury alternative,” the lawsuit said. “They would be a common sight in every neighborhood — rolling off assembly lines in Flint, parked in driveways in Dearborn, charging outside grocery stores in Grand Rapids, and running quietly down Woodward Avenue.”
In that alternative world, the suit argued, fossil fuels would still be available but not be the default.
“Instead, Michigan consumers today remain locked in transportation and primary energy markets that have failed to evolve — not because clean alternatives are not viable, but because defendants have suppressed the conditions for their otherwise inevitable deployment and adoption,” the lawsuit said.
