The world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, Norway’s $2.2-trillion Government Pension Fund Global, has dropped its active voting engagement on climate issues at the biggest oil firms in which it has stakes, a climate group said in a report on Tuesday.
The Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), which is commonly referred to as ‘Norway’s oil fund’ because it was created with oil and gas revenues, is a shareholder in many large companies in the world, including Big Oil. The Norwegian fund was created in the 1990s and today it holds on average 1.5% of all listed companies in the world.
The manager of the Norwegian fund, Norges Bank Investment Management, said in its latest responsible investment report that “The heart of our efforts will be engagement-led action to support and challenge our portfolio companies to transition their business models to net zero emissions by 2050.”
Despite the fund’s stated position that “climate risk is fundamental financial risk,” the fund’s actions in 2025 at Big Oil’s AGMs reveal a significant implementation gap, environmental group Framtiden i våre hender (Future in Our Hands) said in the report.
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The report analyzed how the Norwegian fund voted at 12 of the world’s largest investor-owned upstream oil and gas developers currently expanding production — Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell, TotalEnergies, Petrobras, Eni, Mitsui, National Fuel Gas, CPCC, PetroChina, and Repsol.
“Of the 23 priority votes analysed across these 12 companies, NBIM signaled disapproval of management in only three instances — with just one potentially linked to climate concerns,” the author of the report Lucy Brooks wrote.
Moreover, there were just two pro-climate shareholder resolutions at the AGMs, and the fund voted with management against both. The fund filed zero climate-related shareholder proposals of its own, according to the analysis by Framtiden i våre hender.
“For NBIM to maintain its credibility as a responsible investor, it must bridge the gap between its high-level rhetoric and its voting reality,” Brooks wrote in the report.
In comments to Reuters, the fund said that “Voting is one of several tools we may use.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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