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Upping the stakes through stocks Environmental investing firm pushing shareholder proposal at ConocoPhillips meeting, hoping to prevent Teshekpuk Lake drilling Eric Lidji Petroleum News
An environmental advocacy group is asking ConocoPhillips shareholders to weigh the potential environmental damage of oil and gas drilling around Teshekpuk Lake.
The Boston-based investment firm Green Century Capital Management Inc. submitted the proposal for the upcoming ConocoPhillips shareholder meeting in May.
Green Century Capital maintains a mutual fund portfolio of companies it considers environmentally responsible, but also uses its position as a shareholder in major companies like ConocoPhillips to push specific issues related to the environment, including “wilderness preservation and biodiversity.”
“We have a dual aim, to make a profit and make a difference,” said Erin Gray, head of marketing for Green Century Capital.
The proposal, if adopted, would have ConocoPhillips prepare a report on the possible environmental impacts of drilling in those parts of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska set aside in 1998.
The area covers around 600,000 acres of the Northeast Planning Area of the reserve around Teshekpuk Lake, and over the past decade has been a point of contention between environmental groups and the federal government.
Following the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which pushed for more domestic sources of oil production including Alaska, the Bureau of Land Management amended the 1998 decision to include the area around Teshekpuk Lake for future oil and gas drilling, pending environmental studies of the area.
Many consider the area to be a critical habitat for wildlife and subsistence resources in the Arctic and a coalition of environmental groups took the federal government to court over the decision, forcing BLM to conduct more research and cancel planned lease sales.
In August of last year, BLM released a draft of a supplemental environmental impact statement for the Northeast Planning Area, keeping Teshekpuk Lake on the table, but not recommending it as the preferred path for developing the area.
ConocoPhillips against the proposal The ConocoPhillips board of directors is asking shareholders to vote against the Green Century Capital proposal, saying the report would not be “a beneficial use of Company resources.”
That’s partially because the future of Teshekpuk Lake is still uncertain. The final version of the new supplemental EIS and the subsequent record of decision aren’t expected until later in the year.
That means any lease sale for Teshekpuk Lake would probably come under a new presidential administration, and none of the major candidates remaining in either party share the Bush administration’s interest in drilling for oil and gas in Alaska.
ConocoPhillips also believes it has a “history of operating in sensitive areas around the world in a responsible manner.”
Proposal symbolic in many ways The Green Century Capital proposal is symbolic in many ways.
ConocoPhillips could agree to commission the report and still decide to drill around Teshekpuk Lake. Or, ConocoPhillips could decide to leave the Teshekpuk Lake area, only to have another company come in and drill.
Also, shareholder proposals only serve to advise or pressure the decisions of senior management; even if every shareholder at the annual meeting votes for a proposal, ConocoPhillips would not be required to implement it.
Gray agreed that the proposal is a good-faith effort in many ways, but said Green Century Capital’s goal is to promote transparency and reporting, giving environmentally minded investors more information about companies.
Green Century Capital made a similar proposal last year and almost 27 percent of the shareholders present at the annual meeting voted in favor of it, which the company saw as a surprising victory and proof that shareholders outside the environmental community supported the idea.
“We see this as a real sea change in the oil industry,” Gray said. “In the past it would have been unheard of for an oil investor to put an area off limits, in some people’s mind.”
Green Century not new to Alaska Several years ago, Green Century Capital and other environmental groups pushed for the major oil companies to withdraw from Arctic Power, a lobbying group related to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. At least two companies dropped their membership in the organization, although it is unclear if the decision was prompted by the work of Green Century Capital.
“We have had a very longstanding interest in Alaska and the issue of wildness preservation, and it’s probably our longest on-going campaign and probably our most successful,” Gray said.
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