Consumers didn't ask oil companies to run multi-decade campaigns of lies. Your second sentence is accurate but incomplete - the management of multinationals did what was in the best interest of the management.

Multinationals are not blameless even if consumers ultimately create demand. It was them that has been working overtime for around a century now developing marketing and figuring out how to manipulate human psychology to convince consumers to buy as much as possible, creating the culture of consumerism we have today.