Investors call for vote on any BP rowback on climate goals

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A group of 48 institutional investors to BP has called for granting shareholders to vote on any plan by oil specialization to its climatic goals, which puts a potential clash with the American Elliott Management Fund.
Intervention is followed by investors, including Rathbones Investment Management, Phoenix Group, Robeco and Royal London Asset Management, pledged by the CEO of BP Murray Auchincloss “to reset” the group’s strategy mainly in the face of pressure from Elliot to promote performance.
Elliott has built a share of about 5 percent in BP and pushes Auchincloss to strip large parts of the work, including some of its green energy investments, according to the Financial Times last week.
But other investors are concerned that Auchincloss will reduce climate obligations and focus on oil and gas production on an investor day in London next Wednesday.
“BP has previously made a vote for shareholders on its transitional strategy and expect to maintain a similar level of accountability for the changes in future material strategy,” investors said this week in a letter to the BP Helge Lund chair.
The group has 2.5 percent of BP shares, according to FT accounts, slightly over half of the Eliott share, confirming the influence of the hedge fund as the company evaluates its options.
The demand increases the pressure on Lund and Auchincloss before the investor day, which Eliott and other shareholders are seen as a decisive test of BP leadership.
According to the leading carbon removal strategy in this field, Lund and former CEO Bernard Loni led the company in 2020 to reduce its production of oil and gas by 40 percent by 2030.

Two years ago, this commitment retracted a 25 percent reduction and some investors expect the goal to be completely canceled.
Ocinklos, who was appointed in January 2024, has already set new expenses on oil and gas that analysts expect to maintain BP production at the current levels. BP is still the only specialty of oil and gas with a difficult goal to reduce production.
If the goal of production is reduced or removed, the shareholders want to reveal more detailed information about its spending on fossil projects to ensure that they continue to reduce emissions and are not left with their intermediate assets with a decrease in demand for oil.
“We need a clearer picture about the flexibility of this spending and its compatibility with the goals of Paris,” said Carolla van Lamwin, Robeco, referring to the 2015 United Nations Convention.
In 2022, 88 percent of BP shareholders voted in favor of the company’s strategy, including commitment to reduce oil and gas production. The group has not made a vote on the carbon removal strategy since then.
Looking at the changes, Auchincloss is expected to announce next week, “From time in time requesting that shareholders give the opportunity to vote on [strategy] In 2025, investors said in the letter.
BP confirmed that she had received the message, adding that she would respond in time.
Lund, former CEO of the Norwegian Energy Group, has been BP president since 2019 and has had a fundamental role in developing its current strategy. Auchincloss has been in the Board of Directors since 2020 and was the financial manager before the first job was filed.
While Elliott publicly did not publicly mention, the hedge box wants to see a “essential axis”, according to a person familiar with his thinking.
This short -term growth in oil and gas production should not mean, but it must include “allocating strong capital and the size of its costs [and] The stripping plan, “added the person.
Elliot refused to comment.
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2025-02-19 05:00:00