US judge dismisses Michigan climate lawsuit against oil companies

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - A US judge on Tuesday dismissed an antitrust lawsuit in which Michigan accused four major oil companies of colluding to forestall competition in renewable energy, including electric vehicles, a decision in line with prior rulings in similar cases.

US District Judge Jane Beckering in Grand Rapids rejected the lawsuit filed in January by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, against BP, Chevron, Exxon, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute.

The judge said antitrust laws protect against none of the injuries for which Michigan sought a remedy, except for energy overcharges.

"The distance is too great between the alleged conspiracy and Michigan’s and its residents’ overcharges to find that the conspiracy proximately caused the overcharges," Beckering said.

The complaint said the companies sought to "restrain the emergence of electric vehicles and renewable primary energy technologies in the United States."

Other judges have rejected similar climate lawsuits including in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico and South Carolina.

A spokesman for Nessel said she disagreed with the ruling and was considering the state's options.

The Justice Department, which in May sued Michigan trying to prevent it from suing the oil companies, praised the judge's ruling, calling Michigan's effort "another aggressively anti-energy lawsuit."

A spokesman for Nessel did not immediately comment.

A lawyer for Chevron, Ted Boutrous, said the decision adds "to the growing list of federal and state courts that have dismissed climate lawsuits."

Michigan's suit said in the 1970s, Exxon developed the first hybrid gas-electric vehicle technologies but never marketed it and cited Exxon's internal research in 1979 that "predicted that renewable energy would increasingly become a competitive threat to fossil fuels."

Chevron and the other companies have been fighting for years against lawsuits by state and local governments seeking to hold them responsible for climate change, many of which remain pending.

The Trump administration has taken a series of actions to make it easier for automakers to avoid building electric vehicles and make them more expensive for consumers to buy, reversing Biden administration policies. 

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Franklin Paul)