{"id":47517,"date":"2017-11-23T08:13:07","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T13:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=47517"},"modified":"2017-11-23T08:13:07","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T13:13:07","slug":"norwegian-oil-fund-ready-to-divest-from-oil-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/norwegian-oil-fund-ready-to-divest-from-oil-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"Norwegian Oil Fund Ready To Divest From Oil & Gas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Norway, which is still a monarchy, has two sovereign wealth funds<\/a>. The\u00a0Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, was established in 1990 to invest the profits from the country’s petroleum sales. As of September of this year, it was valued at more than $1 trillion, equal to\u00a0$192,307 per Norwegian citizen. The other is\u00a0Government Pension Fund Norway and is much smaller.<\/p>\n

\"Norway<\/a>By law, the managers of the funds are prevented from investing in certain companies deemed not to meet the high ethical standards the country considers appropriate. Now, the deputy central bank chief who supervises the Oil Fund has told Reuters<\/a><\/em> it is recommending to Parliament that oil and gas stocks be deleted from its portfolio. How ironic that a fund which owes its existence to fossil fuel profits now deems fossil fuel companies to be inappropriate investments.<\/p>\n

Divestment in Norway is just one more sign that fossil fuels are facing the end of the line. Fossil fuel executives try to put a brave face on things, but the signs are everywhere — the world is moving quickly to end it love affair with petroleum and coal. It won’t be tomorrow but it will be within the lifetime of most people alive today.<\/p>\n

The prices of renewables — both wind and solar — are plunging, putting fossil fuels at a competitive disadvantage. The world’s nations are not yet doing nearly enough to control global warming but they are at least talking about phasing out coal powered generating plants<\/a> as soon as possible. Since 40% of global carbon emissions come from burning coal, that’s important progress. Siemens this week announced it is cutting nearly 7,000 jobs <\/a>in its oil and gas divisions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Oil and gas stocks currently account for about 6% of The Norwegian Oil Fund or about $37 billion. If the Norwegian Parliament approves the move, divestment will reduce the fund’s exposure to falling energy prices in the future.\u00a0Deputy central bank governor Egil Matsen explains,\u00a0\u201cOur advice is to simply remove the oil and gas sector, as it is defined in the FTSE reference index, from the fund\u2019s reference index.\u00a0That would mean all companies that the FTSE has classified with the sector, should be removed from our reference index.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe risk for the oil sector is how many investment funds will downsize their exposure to extractive industries,\u201d says Jason Kenney, oil analyst at bank Santander.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis news will be scrutinized very closely by funds around the world who are already looking closely at the climate risks in their portfolios and which sectors and companies will fare best in the low-carbon transition,\u201d adds Stephanie Pfeifer, head of the Institutional Investors Group of Climate Change. It represents 140 investors that work on global warming and with combined assets of more than 20 trillion Euros.\u00a0\u201cInvestors will look even more carefully at which companies are aligning their business strategies to the transition to a low-carbon energy system and which ones are not. Investors then have a range of options for managing the risks they perceive,\u201d she told Reuters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The news was downplayed by other financial analysts, but climate activist Bill McKibben<\/a>, founder of 350.org<\/a>, was enthusiastic about the news.\u00a0\u201cThis is astonishing — as astonishing as the moment when the Rockefellers divested the world\u2019s oldest oil fortune.\u00a0This is the biggest pile of money on the planet, most of it derived from oil — but that hasn\u2019t blinded its owners to the realities of the world we now inhabit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBravo Norway, and let\u2019s hope it gets through because the future of fossil fuel investment is looking shaky indeed,\u201d adds Rachel Kennerley, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Norway, which is still a monarchy, has two sovereign wealth funds. The\u00a0Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, was established in 1990 to invest the profits from the country’s petroleum sales. As of September of this year, it was valued at more than $1 trillion, equal to\u00a0$192,307 per Norwegian citizen. The other 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The\u00a0Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, was established in 1990 to invest the profits from the country’s petroleum sales. As of September of this year, it was valued at more than $1 trillion, equal to\u00a0$192,307 per Norwegian citizen. The other…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}