Environmental impacts on investors

Shareholders are often unaware that they could lose more than 6% of their investments to environmental risks, according to a study of 16 oil and gas companies by the World Resources Institute (WRI), an environmental think tank. BP, Conoco, and Shell’s annual reports indicate that climate policies may affect their financial future, but few others disclose information about environmental impacts, and no company actually makes a quantitative link between environmental risk and financial performance. The report finds only 3 of the 16 companies are prepared for the costs associated with cleaning up pollution and searching for new energy sources that maintain biodiversity and ecosystems. The study was based on WRI’s award-winning method for determining the future impact of environmental issues on shareholder value. Changing Oil: Emerging Environmental Risks and Shareholder Value in the Oil and Gas Industry is available at www.wri.org.