Norway’s oil fund sides with climate activists against ExxonMobil and Chevron — World’s biggest sovereign wealth fund attempts to force policy change at US groups despite backing European oil majors
Norway’s oil fund sides with climate activists against ExxonMobil and Chevron — World’s biggest sovereign wealth fund attempts to force policy change at US groups despite backing European oil majors
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Between Scylla and Charybdis:^1
>Norway’s $1.4tn oil fund will back shareholder proposals at Exxon’s and Chevron’s annual meetings next Wednesday for the US oil and gas majors to introduce targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from the use of its products.
>That stands in contrast to the fund’s refusal to back similar proposals — designed to ensure the world limits warming to under 2C to meet the Paris climate agreement — at European majors such as BP, Shell, and TotalEnergies, the French group whose annual meeting is on Friday.
>Carine Smith Ihenacho, the fund’s chief corporate governance officer, told the Financial Times there was a difference between how European and US oil majors viewed so-called Scope 3 emission targets, which occur when their products are burnt or consumed.
>Ihenacho said the issue was not “black and white” and that one group was “hopeless” and the other “great”. But she stressed that European oil majors were ahead on the issue.
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>Mark van Baal, founder of Follow This, the prominent activist group behind the shareholder proposals at the oil majors, said he welcomed the oil fund’s support on Exxon and Chevron but was “surprised” it failed to do the same with BP, Shell and Total.
>“The fund have a huge responsibility. This voting jeopardises their credibility as stewards of the global economy. Basically, they are saying to Shell, BP and Total: you don’t have to reduce your emissions this decade. We expect them to correct this oversight next year,” he added.
>Van Baal said BP and Shell had made “empty promises” for 2050 as European companies took “baby steps” on climate change. “In a field of laggards, it’s very easy to be the leader,” he added.
>But the fund, whose inflows come from Norway’s petroleum revenues, has faced accusations of hypocrisy for telling energy companies what to do when its home country earns record sums from oil and gas.
^1 Richard Milne (26 May 2023), “Norway’s oil fund sides with climate activists against ExxonMobil and Chevron”, https://www.ft.com/content/ad012975-0c77-4aba-b0b5-4174290dd2a7
Petro-NOKs telling the petro-$ they suck. As if StatOil-products would emit less CO2.