BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street are the real power behind Big Oil’s climate retreat, report finds

The report, Toxic Investors: The Dirty Dozen’s insatiable drive for oil and gas profits, reveals that BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, the so-called “Big Three” asset managers, have dramatically increased their shareholdings in the world’s largest publicly listed oil and gas companies, known as the “Dirty Dozen”.

Together, these three firms now own more than 18% of the Dirty Dozen’s total shares, a 30% increase since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015. Just 25 companies control over 40% of total shares across the group.

“The concentration of power in a small number of mega-powerful asset managers is the real driving force behind the oil industry’s aggressive push for more oil and gas and more climate breakdown,” said report co-author Professor David Whyte, Professor of Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London. “If we want to tackle climate change, we need to confront those asset managers and take the future of the planet out of their hands.”

The report uses original analysis of Capital IQ shareholder data to track how ownership has shifted since 2015. It shows that the number of investors required to form a controlling stake (>50%) in these companies has dropped from 37 to just 30 on average.

“The world’s biggest oil and gas companies have been retreating from their climate commitments and are planning to increase fossil fuel production,” said co-author Bill Spence, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Queen Mary university of London. “They’re doing this in the service of their largest shareholders — firms that most people have never heard of, but which wield enormous power behind the scenes.”

The report comes as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP all scale back or abandon previously announced net-zero pledges. In 2023 alone, the five largest oil firms returned over $100 billion to shareholders in dividends and stock buybacks.

The authors argue that the growing concentration of ownership among mega-asset managers presents a structural barrier to climate action, one that must be addressed if fossil fuel expansion is to be stopped.