Oklahoma AG Threatens California Commissioner on Insurer Fossil Fuel Rules

Oklahoma’s attorney general has sent a letter to California’s insurance commissioner threatening legal action if that state continues with its policy of requiring insurance companies to publicly disclose investments in fossil fuels.

Oklahoma’s Attorney General Mike Hunter maintains that California Insurance Commissioner David Jones’ Climate Risk Carbon Initiative policies will harm the energy industry.

Last year, Jones announced plans to initiate a data call that requires insurance companies to annually disclose their carbon-based investments, which includes investments in oil, gas and coal. The data call is targeted to companies selling in the California market that have at least $100 million in premiums nationally.

And in late January 2017, Jones asked all insurance companies doing business in California to voluntarily divest from investments in thermal coal in an effort to reduce carbon emissions and battle climate change.

Hunter is urging Jones to stop requiring insurance companies to publicly disclose investments in fossil fuels. He also wants California to stop calling on insurers to pledge divestiture from the coal industry.

Hunter’s letter was signed by 11 other state attorneys general and one governor.

According to the media release issued by the Oklahoma AG’s office, the fossil fuel investment disclosures, as well as whether an insurer has signed a pledge not to invest in coal are posted on the California Insurance Department’s website.

Hunter maintains that because one in four Oklahomans works in the energy industry, the threats posed by the California commissioner’s Climate Risk Carbon Initiative will harm families, businesses and insurance carriers in Oklahoma.

“This misguided policy is negligent, politically driven, unrelated to insurance regulation and is risking a certain lawsuit,” Hunter said in the statement released by his office.

In the letter to Jones, Hunter wrote that the required disclosures “are largely immaterial to a well-functioning insurance market,” and that the disclosures would harm consumers rather than help them.

“This is because immaterial disclosures only serve to dilute important information required by other disclosures. …” They also confuse consumers and insert political disagreements over environmental policy into the domain of insurance carrier investments,” he said.

Hunter also wrote that if Jones continues “to call for divestment and require discriminatory disclosures of fossil fuel investments, we will be forced to consider the legal avenues of relief available to protect our insurance carriers, energy producers, and consumers.”

Jones says he undeterred. “Climate change poses a potential financial risk to insurance company investments in coal, oil, gas, and utilities that rely on carbon to generate electricity,” he said in a statement responding to Hunter’s letter.

Along with Hunter, the attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming, and the governor of Kentucky, signed the letter.

Related:

• California Commissioner ‘Undeterred’ by Challenges to Climate Disclosure Initiative
• California’s Climate Risk Database Calls Out Insurer Carbon Investments
• California Commissioner Explains Call for Insurer Divestment from Coal
• Insurer Fossil Fuel Divestment Focus of Washington Climate Change Summit
• Report Calls Out Insurers for Half-a-Trillion Dollars in ‘Dirty Energy’ Investments
• California Commissioner Explains Call for Insurer Divestment from Coal