Engineering pension fund PMT has decided to stop investing in 40 oil and gas companies because they are not environment-friendly enough, but will continue to put money into nine others, including Shell and BP.

Pension funds have been coming under increasing pressure to clean up their investment portfolios, especially from anti-fossil fuel campaign groups.

PMT said on Friday it believes it is better to invest in some firms so that they can engage in dialogue with them. The nine in which it will still invest have all committed to being climate neutral by 2050 and have a well-founded strategy to do this, PMT said.

PMT is one of the biggest pension funds in the Netherlands with 1.4 million participants, both in work and retired.

“We think it is important that multinationals like Shell, despite moving slowly through the energy transition for now, are part of the solution,” said Hartwig Liersch, PMT’s director of investments.

ABP, the Dutch civil service fund and one of the biggest in the world, said in 2021 it would sell most of its fossil fuel investments, and also no longer invests in Shell. The sale covered more than €15bn in assets, or almost 3% of the fund’s total assets.