BP is set for a clash between shareholders over its climate goals as the season for annual general meetings (AGM) kicks off.
The oil major’s board is likely to face conflicting pressures during the meeting at its Sunbury-on-Thames hub on Thursday, with some investors backing a bigger slowdown in climate action while others protest against its recent retreat.
BP announced a drastic shift away from investing in renewables in favour of more oil and gas earlier this year, claiming that it went “too far, too fast” on green energy.
Some shareholders had pushed for a refocus on fossil fuels in a bid to boost its profits and share price that have lagged behind its rivals.
BP’s AGM opens a proxy season that could be overshadowed by uncertainty after US President Donald Trump’s election accelerated corporate America’s shift away from environment, social and governance (ESG) principles and encouraged energy giants to focus more on fossil fuels.
On the other hand, the UK energy giant’s recent green retreat has angered environmental groups and contradicts guidance by global energy bodies designed to help limit climate change.
A group of 48 institutional investors recently also criticised the firm for not offering a direct vote on the oil major’s revised strategy.
In protest, some shareholders are expected to vote against the resolution to reappoint chairman Helge Lund on Thursday as a way of expressing their dissatisfaction with the revised strategy.
Mr Lund, who played a key role in setting BP’s green agenda, recently announced he will step down in “due course” as the company plots a new course.
Given his impending departure, Tarek Bouhouch, from activist group Follow This, said a vote against the reappointment would have a “sole ESG purpose” and send a “strong signal”.
“BP has made a hasty, we even say panic-mode, U-turn on their climate promises,” he told the PA news agency.
“It took them a couple of weeks to scrub clear their five-year-old pledges.”
Follow This is not filing its usual climate resolutions at oil majors this year following political ESG setbacks and legal threats – having been sued by US giant ExxonMobil last year.
“We decided not to file amid a lot of uncertainty with regards to shareholders’ rights and the economic fundamentals that are (being) debated and have had a chilling effect on the engagement for 2025,” Mr Bouhouch said.
Follow This instead hopes the oppose vote will reach at least 10%, marking a record high for opposition to board member reappointments at UK oil majors in at least the last decade.
Meanwhile, the decision not to file a shareholder resolution is part of a wider slowdown in activism this year.
Investors pressing companies on ESG matters filed a total of 355 shareholder proposals as of February 21 – down from 536 filed at the same point in 2024 and 542 filed at the same point in 2023, according to a report from activist group As You Sow.
Penny Fowler, co-director of corporate engagement at ShareAction, said that this proxy season responsible investors “are rightly concerned about what the long-term financial risks of compounding climate change (are) and are asking that these powerful companies play their part in preventing the worst effects of global heating”.
“Communities around the world are grappling with the snowballing of harmful impacts from our changing climate, from super-storms to extreme heat and drought,” she said.
Back in 2020, BP announced some of the most ambitious goals among fossil fuel companies to cut oil and gas production by 40% by 2030 and invest heavily in renewables.
However, BP has said it now wants to increase its production to between 2.3 million and 2.5 million barrels of oil per day by 2030.
According to the International Energy Agency, no new fossil fuel projects are compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C compared with pre-industrial levels, a goal adopted by most of the international community.
