Bloomberg\/London BP boss Bob Dudley launched a wide-ranging attack on the divestment movement that\u2019s calling on institutional investors to sell down their oil stocks, rejecting warnings from the likes of the Bank of England that hydrocarbons present a risk to the financial system. There are \u201cpeople who want to drive a wedge between the energy industry and investors \u2013 between oil and money,\u201d Dudley said on Wednesday at the Oil & Money conference in London. \u201cThey push for potentially confusing disclosures, raise the spectre of a systemic risk to the financial system from stranded assets, and campaign for divestment.\u201d The criticism puts the British oil major at odds with the country\u2019s central bank. Governor Mark Carney has suggested that the fight against climate change could leave some oil reserves stranded \u2013 effectively worthless \u2013 and that the exposure of UK investors is \u201cpotentially huge.\u201d Now asset managers are increasingly prodding the world\u2019s biggest polluters to come up with stronger green strategies. Proponents of the divestment movement \u201care driven by good intentions, but my concern is that their suggested recommendations could lead to bad outcomes,\u201d Dudley said. \u201cWe could take a different, more innovative and collaborative path. One that recognizes many fuels must play a part in meeting the dual challenge – albeit made much cleaner.\u201d Since activist group 350.org started the climate divestment movement in 2012, multiple institutional investors have signed up to the six Principles for Responsible Investment, a UN-backed framework for incorporating environmental, social and governance issues into investment practices. Carney himself is leading a group called the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, prodding companies to make transparent the risks they face from environmental rules. Dudley cautioned that such disclosures can open companies up to potential litigation. \u201cI know what will happen: we\u2019ll get sued by a certain industry because we\u2019re off the path after a year,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we need some sort of safe-harbour statements\u201d from the regulator before that can work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bloomberg\/London BP boss Bob Dudley launched a wide-ranging attack on the divestment movement that\u2019s calling on institutional investors to sell down their oil stocks, rejecting warnings from the likes of the Bank…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,57,90,96,107,137,139,160,174,184,201,202,209,232,233,244,246,249,256,267,277,279,288],"class_list":["post-1817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aramco","tag-baroudi","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-embargo","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}