Shell won the support of a large majority of shareholders on Tuesday at its annual general meeting, despite a chaotic start to the session and many doubts expressed about the British oil giant’s energy transition.
The accounts, the remuneration of the officers and the board of directors and their continuation in office were adopted almost unanimously. The group’s energy transition plan, while widely adopted, received only 80% of votes in favor, leading the group to say in a statement that this result required “consulting shareholders to understand the reasons.” The Church of England pension fund, a minority shareholder in Shell but at odds with its energy transition strategy, had warned that it would vote against the reappointment of the executives.
CEO Wael Sawan said he was “pleased that the majority of our investors continue to support our strategy to become a carbon neutral energy company by 2050.” The NGO Reclaim Finance, affiliated with the environmental NGO Friends of the Earth, deplores the fact that shareholders validated the company’s climate strategy and “rejected the resolution of Follow This and an investor group calling on the oil giant to align its indirect greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 3) with theParis Agreement to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.”
“Shareholders are responding to the lure of dividends and not to the calls of scientists. (…) We can only hope for a boost or better results at TotalEnergies’ annual general meeting on Friday,” commented Lucie Pinson, founder and director of Reclaim Finance. It deplores the fact that Shell “remains the world’s seventh largest oil and gas producer and continues to develop new oil projects”. The start of the GA was eventful, with dozens of pro-environment protesters interrupting the leaders’ introductory speeches or chanting “Hit the road, Jack” and replacing the words with “Go to hell, Shell”.
Security guards intervened to prevent a protester, who was walking towards the podium where the group’s leaders were speaking, from reaching the president, Andrew Mackenzie. Dozens of protesters were also removed by security guards from the room where the meeting was being held, with one appearing to faint and another shouting that the three men who were removing her were hurting her, PA reports.
Protesters from pro-environment NGOs including Greenpeace, Tipping Point and Neon also demonstrated outside the GA venue, which started an hour late due to the disruption. At its annual general meeting at the end of April, BP faced a significant number of shareholders who were upset by its decision to slow down its energy transition, but in the end it obtained the support of a large majority of them. Those of Barclays and HSBC had also been disrupted, among others, because these banks are accused by many environmental organizations of over-financing the extraction of polluting hydrocarbons.
Shell reported first-quarter profit up 22% year-on-year to $8.7 billion, after achieving its highest-ever annual profit of $42.3 billion in 2022. Together, BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and TotalEnergies posted more than $40 billion (36 billion euros) in profits this quarter.
