The Financial Times – Pilita Clark

The timing of Royal Dutch Shell’s decision to halt its Arctic oil exploration campaign is hard to ignore — it comes just 10 weeks before nearly 200 countries are due to strike a global climate change accord in Paris.

Shell’s chief executive, Ben van Beurden, has been at the forefront of an industry push for oil and gas companies to engage more publicly on global warming.

He and the company’s chairman, Chad Holliday, a one-time board member of the WWF environmental group in the US, inherited the company’s decision to explore for oil in the Arctic, which has made Shell a global target for a new breed of climate activist.

Greenpeace members have long argued that Arctic oil exploration puts one of the world’s most pristine environments at risk, but the newer campaigners are taking a different tack, claiming that Shell and its investors also face the threat of “stranded assets”.

Read the full article on The Financial Times website.