Danish pension fund PKA ditches 35 oil and gas companies

Danish pension fund PKA, that manages about $46 billion worth of assets, said it has excluded 35 oil and gas companies from its investment portfolio.

PKS, which actively invests into technologies such as offshore wind power and has previously excluded 70 coal companies, said on Thursday that the reason behind the decision was that the oil and gas companies “did not take the necessary initiatives to comply with the Paris agreement.”

The fund plans now to target carbon emissions in the automotive industry.

The excluded oil and gas companies include US-based companies Anadarko and Marathon Oil, Russian Gazprom and Rosneft, Japan’s Inpex and Sinopec of China, PKA said.

Chief Executive Peter Damgaard Jensen said in the statement that PKA had reviewed 62 oil and gas companies to investigate if they had the “right managerial focus on the Paris agreement in their investments.”

Of those, 15 will be added to an observation list with the aim to push them in a more climate-friendly direction, while 12 companies will stay in PKA’s portfolio.