Norway's sovereign wealth fund is looking into selling off shares in oil firms that work in Equatorial Guinea, where oil revenue does nothing to relieve abject poverty, the fund's ethics council said, a list that includes Exxon Mobil, Reuters reported. The Norwegian Pension Fund Global was Exxon Mobil's tenth-largest shareholder at end-2012 with some 16 billion crowns ($2.7 billion) worth of shares, or a stake of 0.81 percent. The fund, whose investments totalled $725 billion on Wednesday, invests Norway's revenues from oil and gas production for future generations. Exxon Mobil was its tenth-largest equity holding at end-2012, according to its annual report. "We are looking into the oil companies in which we hold shares and which are active in Equatorial Guinea," Ola Mestad, the head of the fund's ethics council, said on Wednesday. "The production of the country's dominant natural resource appears to enrich only the country's elite while the living conditions of the population are amongst the worst in the world," the council said in its annual report. The fund has frequently excluded companies for what it deems to be unethical behaviour based on the recommendations of its ethics council. -- SPA 23:52 LOCAL TIME 20:52 GMT تغريد
