As many of the world’s major oil companies — including Exxon, Mobil and Shell — joined a multimillion-dollar industry effort to stave off new regulations to address climate change, they were quietly safeguarding billion-dollar infrastructure projects from rising sea levels, warming temperatures and increasing storm severity.
By AMY LIEBERMAN AND SUSANNE RUST: DEC. 31, 2015
A few weeks before seminal climate change talks in Kyoto back in 1997, Mobil Oil took out a bluntly worded advertisement in the New York Times and Washington Post.
“Let’s face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil,” the ad said. “Scientists cannot predict with certainty if temperatures will increase, by how much and where changes will occur.”
One year earlier, though, engineers at Mobil Oil were concerned enough about climate change to design and build a collection of exploration and production facilities along the Nova Scotia coast that made structural allowances for rising temperatures and sea levels.
While oil prices teetered on the brink of a new fall, Royal Dutch Shell announced in April that it wanted to buy BG Group.
31 Dec 2015
Trefis Team 
If one were Shell and BG directors clutching at straws, seeking to force through a £47billion merger forged in the midst of a dramatic correction in oil prices, you might breathe a sigh of relief at a 2 per cent rebound in Brent crude to $37 a barrel in latest trading.
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