Swedish Pension AP7 Blacklists Oil Giant Aramco

The $115 billion fund also added six other firms to its banned roster for ‘acting against the targets of the Paris agreement.’ Most are in China.

Swedish pension fund AP7 has added oil giant Saudi Arabian Oil Co., better known as Aramco, to its blacklist along with six other firms for “acting against the targets of the Paris Agreement.”

The pension fund (assets: $79 billion) said the seven companies have failed to act in line with the Paris Agreement due to large-scale oil or coal operations without transition plans. The additions raise the total number of companies blacklisted and excluded from the AP7’s investment portfolio to 110.

Five of the seven named companies are based in China: China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., PetroChina, Shanxi Coal International Energy Group, Wintime Energy Group, and Zhejiang Zheneng Electric Power. Other than Aramco, the only company not from China was India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp..

AP7 said it is its policy to invest in companies that act “in an acceptable way” according to the requirements of the international conventions signed by Sweden, and which are expressed in the UN Global Compact’s 10 principles. The guidelines describe companies’ responsibility for human rights, working conditions, the environment and anti-corruption.

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The pension fund said that it blacklists and excludes any company that violates these conventions. It said it also blacklists companies that participate in the development and production of nuclear weapons.

“In December 2016 the Paris Agreement to the UN Climate Convention was included as one of the standards on which the blacklisting analysis is based, and since then the analysis has been continuously developed,” the company said in a statement, adding that “phase-out of coal as an energy source is the single most important measure to curb climate change and has therefore been in focus.”

AP7 notes that in 2020, the Paris Agreement review was expanded and coal companies with a large climate impact and expansion plans began to be blacklisted, and that the requirements were tightened again in 2022 with the blacklisting of companies with large-scale coal operations or oil sands extraction that don’t have transition plans.

“During 2024, AP7 has continued to evolve the criterion to include large oil companies without transition plans, which are thus deemed to act in violation of the Paris Agreement,” AP7 said. “Altogether, 51 fossil fuel companies are blacklisted based on the Paris Agreement, another 10 oil and coal companies are excluded on other criteria.”

While the seven companies were added to the blacklist, AP7 said it removed Brookfield Corp. and Rolls-Royce Holdings from its blacklist “based on the lack of verified information about ongoing violations by the companies.”

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Tags: AP7, Aramco, China, China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Paris agreement, Pension Funds, PetroChina, Saudi Arabian Oil Company, Shanxi Coal International Energy Group, Sweden, Wintime Energy Group, Zhejiang Zheneng Electric Power

The University of Austin, a new higher education institution in Texas will admit its first four-year undergraduate students this fall, and announced on Tuesday a plan to raise a $5 million bitcoin fund to be held in its $200 million long-term endowment.

The school has been touted as an antidote to “woke” thinking that some charge has stifled non-liberal voices in academia. Since its 2021 founding, it has offered several of what it called “forbidden courses,” such as one on “sexual politics” that a course description said would go beyond “standard feminist texts.” The university is currently seeking full accreditation from the US Department of Education, a process that UATX says could take five to seven years. The university has certification in the state of Texas to grant degrees.

The university, which has a $200 million endowment, intends to partner with Unchained, a cryptocurrency financial services company, to hold custody of the institution’s digital assets.

In opting for bitcoin investments, the University of Austin is going against a lot of conventional wisdom among allocators. Institutional investors have been cautious about investing in crypto, with a few outliers such as the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, which recently bought $164 million worth of two bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

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For the University of Austin, committed proceeds to the bitcoin allocation would be held for at least five years. Unchained CEO and co-founder Joseph Kelly donated two bitcoins (roughly $140,000) to kick off the school’s crypto allocation. The university endowment has accepted cryptocurrency for donations and has a fundraising goal of $250 million by the fall of 2024, when UATX plans to enroll its first students.

“University endowments are about serving students, and bitcoin provides a unique opportunity for advancing UATX’s commitment to cultivating future generations of leaders and innovators,” said Thomas Hogan, incoming associate professor, at UATX in a press release.