EOG Resources has committed to reduce its methane emission footprint, joining a growing group of energy companies yielding to shareholder pressure for more environmentally responsible operations, Axios reports, citing a notice from shareholder Trillium Asset Management.
The investment company proposed two shareholder resolutions aimed at forcing EOG Resources to commit to doing more to improve its emissions record-one last year and one early this year. Last year's resolution was rejected after EOG approached the Securities and Exchange Commission and received an exemption from a vote on the proposed resolution.
Yet Trillium persevered, and its second attempt to push the company into the direction it waned worked, with EOG committing to "adopt quantitative targets for reducing methane emissions, and issue a report (at reasonable cost, in a reasonable time, and omitting proprietary information) discussing its plans and progress towards achieving these targets," the investment firm's statement read.
The Axios report quoted a Trillium executive as saying, "Engaging EOG is a slow and incremental process. Year after year we are able to get them to take additional steps. So over the course of 2019 and 2020, we will be continuing to engage and getting that specificity into the targets."
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Activist shareholders have stepped up the pressure on Big Oil to do more about reducing the adverse environmental impact of its business and shareholder resolutions have been a popular way of doing it.
In Europe, BP and Shell have become the target of such resolutions, originating with a Dutch activist investor Follow This. The resolutions calls for an overall reduction in the two supermajors' carbon footprints, and the firm said it was considering similar proposals for Exxon and Chevron as well.
"Targets should be on the agenda of every oil company, given that the oil industry can make or break the Paris Climate Agreement," Reuters quoted Follow This founder Mark van Baal as saying last December.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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