Shareholders challenge BP’s revised climate strategy
The Independent | The oil major’s board is likely to face conflicting pressures during the meeting at its Sunbury-on-Thames hub on Thursday, with some investors backing a bigger slowdown in climate action while others protest against its recent retreat.
BP announced a drastic shift away from investing in renewables in favour of more oil and gas earlier this year, claiming that it went “too far, too fast” on green energy.
[…]In protest, some shareholders are expected to vote against the resolution to reappoint chairman Helge Lund on Thursday as a way of expressing their dissatisfaction with the revised strategy.
Mr Lund, who played a key role in setting BP’s green agenda, recently announced he will step down in “due course” as the company plots a new course.
Given his impending departure, Tarek Bouhouch, from activist group Follow This, said a vote against the reappointment would have a “sole ESG purpose” and send a “strong signal”.
“BP has made a hasty, we even say panic-mode, U-turn on their climate promises,” he told the PA news agency.
“It took them a couple of weeks to scrub clear their five-year-old pledges.”
Follow This is not filing its usual climate resolutions at oil majors this year following political ESG setbacks and legal threats – having been sued by US giant ExxonMobil last year.
“We decided not to file amid a lot of uncertainty with regards to shareholders’ rights and the economic fundamentals that are (being) debated and have had a chilling effect on the engagement for 2025,” Mr Bouhouch said.
Follow This instead hopes the oppose vote will reach at least 10%, marking a record high for opposition to board member reappointments at UK oil majors in at least the last decade.
