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At Thursday’s hearing, the president of BP America, David Lawler, is expected to respond to criticisms like these by pointing to a 1997 speech at Stanford University by John Browne, then chief executive of BP. In the speech, he said that there “is now an effective consensus among the world’s leading scientists that there is a discernible human influence on the climate” and said that “it would be unwise and potentially dangerous to ignore the mounting concern.”

Does the industry support climate policy now?

Most oil and gas industry players have publicly supported the Paris climate agreement.

“We have always believed the U.S. must take a strong leadership role in the Paris talks to facilitate meaningful global progress and to maintain and enhance the competitiveness of U.S. business in a global market,” Ms. Clark is expected to say, according to her prepared remarks.

In the past, the Chamber criticized the Paris pledges developed by the Obama administration, pointing to a potential economic fallout. The Chamber began supporting the global talks after President Trump began the United States’ withdrawal from the accord.

A representative of the Chamber didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group which the four companies in Thursday’s House testimony are members of, spent almost half a million dollars to run ads opposing Democratic members of Congress for their support of’ climate bills, according to advertising data analyzed by InfluenceMap, a London-based think tank that tracks corporate influence on policymaking. Those ads, which include at least 286 that targeted individual members of Congress for their support of climate policies, have been viewed at least 21 million times.

What are the companies doing on the climate front?

On top of their support for the Paris accord, BP and Shell have also made “net zero” commitments — eliminating as much carbon pollution as they put into the atmosphere — for their operations. Companies have also made commitments to reduce the amount of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas that they release into the atmosphere from oil and gas drilling.

However, clean energy investments by the oil and gas industry accounted for only around 1 percent of total capital expenditure last year, according to the International Energy Agency.