Norway Oil Fund Sells out of Anglo American and Glencore on Environmental Grounds
May 13 2020 - 1:55AM
Dow Jones News
By Dominic Chopping
Norges Bank Investment Management, the arm of Norway's central
bank that manages the country's oil fund, said early Wednesday it
has sold its shares in Glencore PLC, Anglo American PLC, RWE AG,
Sasol Ltd., and AGL Energy Ltd. based on its criteria relating to
the use of coal.
The fund last year introduced stricter rules surrounding its
investments in companies that derive income from coal. The new
guidelines mean it must now exclude companies from the fund that
derive at least 30% of their income from thermal coal, base at
least 30% of their operations on thermal coal, extract more than 20
million tons of thermal coal per year, or have a coal power
capacity of more than 10,000 megawatts from thermal coal.
The fund held a 2.4% stake in Anglo American, 1.2% in Glencore
and 0.6% in RWE at the end of 2019, the most recent date that data
is available.
Based on these same rules, the oil fund has placed BHP Group
Ltd./BHP Group PLC, Vistra Energy Corp., Enel SpA and Uniper SE on
an observation list.
The oil fund's policy is to sell its stake in companies before
announcing their exclusion.
In a further move, Norges Bank's executive board has decided to
exclude Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Cenovus Energy Inc.,
Suncor Energy Inc., and Imperial Oil Ltd. on unacceptable levels of
greenhouse gas emissions.
ElSewedy Electric Co. has been excluded on environmental grounds
amid its participation in the development of a hydropower project
in Tanzania, and Vale SA is excluded as a result of repeated dam
breaches.
Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA, or Eletrobras, has been
excluded amid human rights violations in connection with the
development of the powerplant Belo Monte in Brazil.
Decisions to exclude some of these companies was made a while
ago but selling out of the companies took longer than usual due to
the current market situation including thin liquidity in individual
shares.
Norges Bank has decided to revoke the exclusion of AECOM, after
it discontinued its connection to nuclear weapon production, and
Texwinca Holdings Ltd., after a subsidiary suspected of breaching
workers' rights in factories was liquidated.
Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 13, 2020 02:40 ET (06:40 GMT)
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