Insurers State Farm and Berkshire are ramping up investments in fossil fuels

While many insurers have reduced their investments in fossil fuel companies, State Farm, the largest US home and auto insurer, and Berkshire Hathaway’s insurance companies have increased their investments in oil and gas companies in the last decade, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal showed. Wednesday.

Fossil fuel finance and insurance have come under scrutiny in recent years as ESG policies have become mainstream for many investors.

The Journal now analyzed insurers’ annual investment filings in stocks and bonds obtained from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a nongovernmental organization that supports U.S. insurance regulators.

Between 2014 and 2023, State Farm and Berkshire-based insurers increased their investments in oil and gas firms, even as more than half of the 236 property and casualty insurers in the Journal’s analysis cut their spending on stocks and bonds issued by fossil fuel companies.

State Farm, which has invested billions of dollars in stocks and bonds of companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and Diamondback Energy, increased the share of fossil fuel investments in its $142.7 billion portfolio to 3.6% in 2023, from to 2.6% in 2023. 2014, the Journal analysis found.

Berkshire Hathaway’s insurance firms, meanwhile, reported spending $39.9 billion on fossil fuel stocks and bonds in 2023. That increased the share of fossil fuel investments to more than a fifth of their total of 183 billion dollars, according to Jurnal. analysis.

Berkshire Hathaway’s big fossil fuel spending isn’t surprising given Warren Buffett’s bet on Occidental, which his conglomerate has invested heavily in over the past year.

As a result of increasing investments in fossil fuels by Berkshire Hathaway and State Farm, the global exposure of the US property and casualty insurance industry to fossil fuels increased to 4.4% of portfolios in 2023. This, compared to 3.8 % of investments in portfolios. in fossil fuels in 2014, the WSJ analysis found.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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