"Norway's KLP Pension Fund Drops Glencore Over Western Sahara Oil", 08 December 2015

KLP, Norway’s largest life insurer, said it will sell shares of Glencore Plc and no longer invest in the Swiss resource company because its oil-exploration activities off the coast of Western Sahara risk violating “fundamental ethical norms.” It’s “difficult to conclude” that companies including Glencore can engage in oil exploration off the coast of Western Sahara “in a manner consistent with international law,” the Oslo-based pension fund manager said in a statement on its website. Oil exploration by Glencore and others offshore of Western Sahara has been criticized by non-governmental organizations, including Switzerland’s Berne Declaration, because parts of the disputed North African territory have been occupied by Morocco in a decades-long conflict. Morocco, which has been present ever since Spain withdrew in 1975, claims centuries-old historic rights over Western Sahara, a territory the size of Colorado and often described as Africa’s last colony. A spokesman for Baar, Switzerland-based Glencore declined to comment...