The New York attorney general has launched an investigation into Exxon Mobil to determine whether the country's largest oil and gas company lied to investors about how global warming could hurt its balance sheets and also hid the risks posed by climate change from the public.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, issued a subpoena to Exxon Mobil on Wednesday night seeking financial records, internal communications, climate studies, advertising materials and other documents, an official in the attorney general's office familiar with the investigation confirmed Thursday.

The probe spans two areas of the law: consumer protection – whether Exxon Mobil engaged in deceptive or misleading business practices – and New York's fraud and securities law, known as the Martin Act, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Peabody Energy, the nation's largest coal producer, has also been under investigation for the past two years.

The dual investigations were first reported by The New York Times.



Schneiderman's subpoena comes just weeks after a probe by InsideClimate News revealed that despite Exxon funneling millions of dollars in past decades to advocacy groups to obscure how burning oil, gas and coal warms the environment, it had once been a global leader in climate change research.

As early as 1977 – roughly a decade before researcher James Hansen testified before Congress to alert the world to the dangers of climate change – a senior company scientist warned executives that "there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," InsideClimate News reported.

Schneiderman's office began scrutinizing Exxon Mobil as early as last year, the office official tells U.S. News. Exxon Mobil has vigorously denied that it suppressed information.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," CEO Rex Tillerson said Wednesday.



Nonetheless, in the weeks since the debut of the InsideClimate package – which was followed shortly by another expose by the Los Angeles Times – the hashtag #ExxonKnew has been a trending topic on Twitter.

Schneiderman's subpoena could mark the opening salvo in a far broader effort by states to examine what fossil fuel companies knew about man-made climate change, when they knew it and what they may have done to hide its dangers from the public to protect company profits – a campaign that may resemble others that elicited billions of settlement dollars from tobacco companies. (Many of the same marketing figures who worked for the tobacco companies reportedly have more recently found work with climate-denial groups.)



DATA MINE: 61 Percent of Public Supports Clean Power Plan in States Suing to Stop It ]

Private lawsuits aimed at holding companies liable for damage they've caused to the world's climate have met with little success.

"New York's attorney general has shown great courage in holding to account arguably the richest and most powerful company on Earth," Bill McKibben, co-founder of the environmental group 350.org, said in a statement. "We hope that other state attorney[s] general and the federal Department of Justice, and the Securities [and] Exchange Commission, will show similar fortitude."