Source: United States Senator for Arkansas Tom Cotton
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: James Arnold or Mary Collins Atkinson (202) 224-2353
July 14, 2022
Cotton Demands Answers from BlackRock About Involvement with Climate Action 100+, Potential Antitrust Violations
Washington, D.C. — Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) last night sent a letter to Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock Inc., demanding answers about the firm’s involvement in a scheme to reduce drilling for oil and gas that may violate antitrust law.
In part, Cotton wrote, “BlackRock is an ‘investor participant’ in Climate Action 100+ (‘CA100+’), ‘an investor-led initiative’ to pressure ‘the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters [to] take necessary action on climate change’ like, for example, pressuring oil companies to drill for less oil. According to CA100+, ‘investor participants’ are ‘signatories to the initiative and are responsible for direct engagements with focus companies’ that directly compete with one another.”
“Your anti-drilling coercion threatens our national security, hurts Americans struggling to buy a tank of gas, and appears to violate antitrust laws. Specifically, by engaging with competing ‘focus companies,’ CA100+ investor participants appear to be running a spoke-and-hub conspiracy to restrict the supply of fossil fuels and impose various other unlawful restraints on trade. By ‘collaborating’ with other investors, you and your fellow CA100+ investor participants appear to be acting like a climate cartel,” Cotton continued.
Text of the letter may be found here and below.
Mr. Larry Fink
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
BlackRock Inc.
55 East 52nd Street
New York, NY 10055
Dear Mr. Fink,
I’m writing about your involvement in a scheme to reduce drilling for oil and gas.
BlackRock is an “investor participant” in Climate Action 100+ (“CA100+”), “an investor-led initiative” to pressure “the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters [to] take necessary action on climate change” like, for example, pressuring oil companies to drill for less oil. According to CA100+, “investor participants” are “signatories to the initiative and are responsible for direct engagements with focus companies” that directly compete with one another.
Your anti-drilling coercion threatens our national security, hurts Americans struggling to buy a tank of gas, and appears to violate antitrust laws. Specifically, by engaging with competing “focus companies,” CA100+ investor participants appear to be running a spoke-and-hub conspiracy to restrict the supply of fossil fuels and impose various other unlawful restraints on trade. By “collaborating” with other investors, you and your fellow CA100+ investor participants appear to be acting like a climate cartel.
In light of the growing concerns about anti-competitive ESG activities, many law firms have begun offering antitrust counsel to clients participating in initiatives like CA100+.
Please provide answers to the following questions by July 20, 2022:
- Has BlackRock engaged with any focus companies as part of the CA100+ initiative? If so, please list each focus company.
- Has BlackRock collaborated with any other investor participants as part of the CA100+ initiative? If so, please list each investor participant.
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