What Three Decades of Silence Actually Cost

There is a gas station somewhere in California where someone’s grandfather pulled up in the early 1990s to fill his tank. Maybe it was a Sears location. Maybe a 7-Eleven. The Citgo Tristar logo was right there on the pump, the same logo Citgo paid to put there, the same brand Citgo spent $6.5 million promoting. He pumped the gas, paid, and drove away. Nobody told him anything. Nobody had to, legally speaking, but Citgo knew. They already knew.

The court record is clear on this: Citgo “was aware of the climate-related risks associated with fossil fuel products.” That awareness existed while the company was arranging to move up to 22 million gallons of fuel a month through California. It existed while lawyers were drafting lease agreements with Sears and distribution contracts with 7-Eleven. It existed while Citgo’s logo sat at the pump, next to a price per gallon and nothing else. No warning. No disclosure. Nothing.

Imperial Beach, California is a small coastal city at the southwestern tip of the country. It is now one of the plaintiffs in this case. The city’s coastline is being eaten by sea level rise. Its residents, working-class families most of them, are watching the Pacific creep closer to their streets. The City of Richmond is here too. Santa Cruz. San Mateo County. Marin County. These are real places full of real people who were never given the information they needed to make a different choice, demand different policies, or protect themselves.

The disinformation campaign this case describes was not some passive silence. According to the complaint, Citgo and its co-defendants, working through the American Petroleum Institute and other organizations, actively conspired to manufacture doubt about climate science. They did not simply fail to mention the risks. They worked, deliberately and in coordination, to make the public believe those risks were contested, unproven, or exaggerated. Every year that campaign held the line was another year California communities deferred the infrastructure spending they would eventually need. Another year the wildfire season got longer. Another year the sea rose a little further.

The plaintiffs in this case are not filing a claim against a natural disaster. They are filing a claim against a company that understood exactly what it was selling, understood what burning that product at scale would do to the atmosphere, and chose profit over disclosure for thirty consecutive years. That is the ledger that no settlement figure can fully account for.

What the Court Record Actually Says

The following quotes come directly from the California Court of Appeal opinion filed January 5, 2026. These are not allegations. They are findings and admissions cited in a published court ruling.

“Citgo acknowledges that, between 1983 and 2007, it supplied gasoline ‘from California refiners/suppliers . . . to certain retail stations in California owned by Sears, 7-Eleven, and Jack in the Box.'”

• Citgo’s own legal team admitted, in open court, that the company was actively supplying fuel to hundreds of California retail locations for approximately 24 years across three major commercial partnerships.
• This admission directly contradicts Citgo’s public posture of being a mere “middleman” with minimal California exposure. The court explicitly rejected that framing.

“Citgo agreed to make expenditures of $6,500,000 in the aggregate with respect to expenditures requested . . . by Southland, to enhance the CITGO brand with respect to any of the Retail Sites using the CITGO Marks and Trade Names.”

• This is the 7-Eleven contract, cited verbatim in the court record. Citgo committed $6.5 million specifically to brand-building at California retail fuel locations. This is not passive distribution. This is an active, funded marketing strategy.
• The court used this contract to demolish Citgo’s claim that it did not “market” its products in California. Branding, the court found, is advertising.

“The record for purposes of the motion to quash is unambiguous that no warnings regarding the risk of fossil fuel usage were included in those branding materials.”

• The appellate court did not hedge this. The word used is “unambiguous.” Citgo spent millions on branding at California pumps and included zero climate risk warnings in any of it.
• This single finding establishes the core of the failure-to-warn claim: Citgo had the channels, the budget, and the physical presence to warn consumers, and chose not to.

“Citgo does not appear to dispute, at least for purposes of this motion, that it (1) was aware of the climate-related risks associated with fossil fuel products, and (2) did not provide any warnings related to those risks.”

• Citgo’s own legal strategy, at the jurisdictional stage, effectively conceded both knowledge of harm and absence of disclosure. The company chose to argue about geography rather than facts, because the facts were not on its side.
• Under California product liability law, a distributor in the chain of sale who knows about a product’s dangers and fails to warn consumers faces strict liability. This concession will be central to the merits phase of the trial.

“Defendants, in coordination with API and other organizations, conspired to conceal and misrepresent the known dangers of burning fossil fuels, to knowingly withhold material information regarding the consequences of using fossil fuel products, to spread knowingly false and misleading information to the public regarding the weight of climate science research, and to promote their fossil fuel products which they knew were harmful.”

• This is the complaint’s core allegation, cited approvingly by the appellate court in its background section. The word “conspired” is not rhetorical. It is a legal claim that Citgo coordinated with other industry actors to actively mislead the public.
• The American Petroleum Institute (API) is named as the coordination vehicle. The complaint alleges Citgo was an API member “at times relevant to this litigation,” meaning it was an active participant in the trade association’s disinformation infrastructure.

The Specific Harms California Is Already Living With

Public Health

The court record identifies documented and anticipated harms to California residents tied directly to greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuels, the same products Citgo distributed without warnings for 30 years.

• Increased wildfire risk is explicitly identified in the plaintiffs’ filing as a climate harm already occurring in California. Wildfire smoke is a mass public health event: it causes respiratory illness, heart attacks, and elevated mortality across all exposed populations, with children and elderly residents facing the highest risk.
• Extreme flooding events, also named in the record, threaten drinking water infrastructure, sewage systems, and access to emergency services in affected counties, all of which are plaintiff municipalities in this case.
• Drought conditions, cited by the plaintiffs, degrade air quality through increased dust and particulate matter, reduce access to clean water, and create conditions that worsen heat-related illness and death, particularly in lower-income communities with less capacity to adapt.
• Landslide risk, named in the court record, threatens residential areas and transportation routes, with cascading effects on evacuation capacity during emergencies and long-term displacement of residents.

Economic Inequality

The financial burden of climate adaptation is landing hardest on local governments that have the least ability to absorb it, and it is being passed directly to taxpayers who were never told what the fossil fuel companies knew.

• The plaintiff municipalities state in their filings that they have already spent significant public funds studying and mitigating the effects of global warming in California, with commitments of further investment required. These are costs extracted from local tax bases, from public school budgets, from infrastructure maintenance accounts.
• The San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District exists precisely because sea level rise is already a present, quantifiable threat to the county’s coastline, civil infrastructure, and property values. Its operating budget is a direct cost imposed on residents by the inaction of companies like Citgo.
• Small coastal municipalities like Imperial Beach lack the tax base of larger cities. Their ability to fund seawalls, relocate utilities, and rebuild after flooding events is structurally limited. The costs of adaptation are effectively regressive: they fall most heavily on residents in the communities least able to pay.
• Property values in high-risk coastal and fire-adjacent zones are already being impacted by climate risk assessments. Working-class homeowners in these zones cannot simply relocate, and the decrease in their property values represents a direct wealth transfer from ordinary residents to the companies that suppressed the science explaining why those properties are now at risk.
• The court record notes that California’s exercise of jurisdiction serves the purpose of ensuring “the costs of injuries resulting from defective products are borne by the manufacturers and distributors that put such products on the market rather than by the injured persons who are powerless to protect themselves.” That principle recognizes, directly, the power imbalance at the core of this case.

What Thirty Years of Market Access Looked Like in Numbers

Who Answers for This and What You Can Do

This ruling is a jurisdictional win, the case now moves into the merits phase, where the actual liability of Citgo and over 30 co-defendants will be litigated. Here is who is in the room and what you can push.

The Defendants

The following corporations are named in the complaint. Leadership and board composition were not included in the source material. Accountability pressure should target corporate roles at these entities.

• Citgo Petroleum Corporation
• Chevron Corporation and Chevron U.S.A. Inc.
• Exxon Mobil Corporation and ExxonMobil Oil Corporation
• BP P.L.C. and BP America, Inc.
• Shell PLC, Shell USA, Inc., and Shell Oil Products Company LLC
• ConocoPhillips and ConocoPhillips Company
• Phillips 66 and Phillips 66 Company
• Total E&P USA Inc. and Total Specialties USA Inc.
• Eni S.p.A. and Eni Oil & Gas Inc.
• Anadarko Petroleum Corporation
• Occidental Petroleum Corporation and Occidental Chemical Corporation
• Repsol S.A., Repsol Energy North America Corporation, and Repsol Trading USA Corporation
• Marathon Oil Company, Marathon Oil Corporation, and Marathon Petroleum Corporation
• Hess Corporation
• Devon Energy Corporation and Devon Energy Production Company, L.P.
• Encana Corporation
• Apache Corporation
• American Petroleum Institute (API), named as a disinformation coordination body

Watchlist: Regulatory and Legal Bodies

• California Attorney General’s Office: The state AG has authority to intervene in and support climate litigation on behalf of California residents. Public pressure can push the AG to file amicus briefs and expand enforcement.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Responsible for enforcing federal emissions standards and climate-related regulations. Contact your federal representatives demanding the EPA support state-level climate accountability cases rather than preempting them.
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Has jurisdiction over deceptive advertising and marketing claims. The disinformation campaigns described in this case are squarely within the FTC’s mandate. File complaints at ftc.gov/complaint.
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): Publicly traded defendants in this case are required to disclose material climate risks to investors. The SEC’s climate disclosure rules create a parallel accountability track. Report suspected disclosure violations at sec.gov/tcr.
• California Coastal Commission: Has direct jurisdiction over sea level rise planning and can place pressure on state and local governments to accelerate adaptation funding and name responsible parties in public documents.

Mutual Aid and Grassroots Resistance

• Support the plaintiff municipalities directly. The Cities of Imperial Beach, Richmond, and Santa Cruz and the Counties of San Mateo, Marin, and Santa Cruz are spending taxpayer money on this litigation. Contact their city and county councils and demand they hold the line, that they do not settle for insufficient amounts, and that any settlement funds go directly to climate adaptation infrastructure in affected communities.
• Connect with local climate adaptation organizations in coastal California. Organizations working on sea level rise, wildfire preparedness, and drought resilience in these specific counties need volunteers, donations, and public visibility. Find them through 350.org’s local chapter map and the California Climate Action Network.
• Organize around fossil fuel divestment at every level of your local government. Pension funds, municipal investment portfolios, and university endowments in California still hold fossil fuel stocks. Divestment campaigns at these institutions remove the financial infrastructure that subsidizes further lobbying and litigation resistance by companies like Citgo.
• Document the infrastructure in your community that is already at risk. Photograph coastal erosion, flood-prone roads, and fire-damaged land. Publish it. Local documentation becomes evidentiary support in future litigation and keeps public attention on the material reality of climate harm.
• If you purchased gasoline at a Citgo-branded station in California between 1983 and 2007, you are part of the affected consumer base this case addresses. Contact the plaintiff legal teams through the law firms listed in the court record (Sher Edling, among others) to understand whether individual or class-based participation is an option as this case develops.