The effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have spread to Kingston, after the council revealed its pension fund bought £900,000 of BP shares last year.
The value of shares in the oil giant has almost halved since the April 20 blast on Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 people and caused America’s worst ever oil spill. This week the company announced it would suspend dividends payments for 2010.
The BP shares represent less than one quarter of one per cent of the £380m pension fund.
A council spokesman said: “While the current market value of BP shares has fallen, the pension fund would only suffer a loss if those shares were sold below the original purchase price.
“While our fund managers are monitoring BP, no shares have been sold since the oil spill disaster and there has been no financial loss to the pension fund on the investment in the current year to date.”
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