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The nation’s largest lobbying arm of the oil and gas industry is calling on Congress to shield companies from a growing number of lawsuits and state laws passed to make the industry pay for the impacts of pollution.

The American Petroleum Institute’s 2026 policy priorities include ending the expansion of climate superfund policies recently passed in Vermont and New York. Claire Dorner, associate director of the Sierra Club, said these new laws simply say if you make a mess, you need to clean it up.

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"It isn’t fair that big oil and gas companies are continuing to rake in record profits while we pay the price for pollution," said Dorner, "and lives literally paying the price, and we need to make them pay for their damages."

Superfund laws have also been introduced in California, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, but not yet in Colorado.

The American Petroleum Institute calls the new laws abusive, and is urging Congress to intervene to “maintain U.S. energy leadership around the world.”

The Institute also wants lawmakers to speed up permitting processes in order for the industry to make investments they say would strengthen the nation’s energy grid.

But taxpayers in Colorado and across the U.S. are already making investments in the fossil fuel industry.

Tony Aguilar Rosenthal, senior researcher with the Revolving Door Project, said as working families struggle with the rising cost of housing, groceries, and utilities, U.S. oil and gas companies currently receive over $34 billion in government handouts every year.

"It’s really important to not just make polluters pay for the immensity of the damage and the harm that they cause," said Rosenthal, "but also to stop public subsidies, which is billions of dollars every year."

Dorner said the Institute’s goal of blocking state laws that hold fossil fuel companies accountable is just the latest example of an industry kicking the true costs of climate change down the road.

"They’ve known since the 1970s that continuing to burn fossil fuels is going to lead to disaster," said Dorner. "And they actively lied throughout the decades to try to maintain the status quo so that they can continue making their profits."