The oil companies are interested in it insofar as it will help them extract oil- that leaves large areas of the problem dismissed.

The relationship between the oil industry and geology is a problematic and complicated one. On the one hand, well, they couldn't extract oil without us. On the other, geologists are some of the primary folks involved with climate change research- only climatologists themselves do more work on the issue, and not by that overwhelming of a number.

Science requires a certain ethical commitment- doing science without it leads to catastrophe and abuse. I don't think that refusing to explore certain avenues of research is an effective ethical strategy much of the time, however. In this case? Certainly not. There's really not much research in sedimentary geology that doesn't impinge upon the oil industry in one way or another, and abandoning sedimentary geology would be absurd. (Paleontology, for example, is of immense practical use in oil exploration. Should we stop studying paleontology? Of course not.) Instead, in these situations, scientists must act politically- changing public opinion, lobbying for policy changes, and seeking to change the ways in which we as a civilization interact with nature.