Nearly six years after committing to divest from fossil fuel companies, Georgetown University continues to hold shares in at least one company with close ties to oil and gas extraction.
As of September 2025, the university holds over 3.3 million shares, or 6% of its public portfolio, in Granite Ridge Resources, an oil and natural gas production and exploration company, according to November securities filings reviewed by The Hoya. Georgetown has owned Granite Ridge stock since the fourth quarter of 2023 and increased its direct holdings by over 26% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
In February 2020, the university’s board of directors pledged to immediately cease new investments, divest its public holdings in fossil fuel “exploration or extraction” companies within five years and sell off private investments within ten years and “as soon as it is prudent.”
Granite Ridge appears to fit the criteria, according to multiple investment experts who reviewed The Hoya’s findings.
In October 2022, two private firms merged to form Granite Ridge, which then entered the public market. Granite Ridge defines itself as operating in “oil and natural gas development, exploration and production.” The company owns thousands of wells across six basins, which are operated by third-party partners.
A university spokesperson said Georgetown is seeking to divest from Granite Ridge. However, the spokesperson said the university is not in violation of its divestment commitment since the company was a privately held investment until 2022, after the divestment policy passed.
“Prior to 2020, Georgetown invested in several private equity funds, the general partner of which facilitated the creation of Granite Ridge through swapping the underlying fund assets for shares in the newly created Granite Ridge,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. “Since 2022, these private equity funds have subsequently made periodic distributions of Granite Ridge shares to Georgetown.”
“The endowment will liquidate these shares by February 2030, which is the ten-year timeline for divestment from private investments set forth in the fossil fuel divestment policy,” the spokesperson added. “The investment team is actively considering several pathways for divestment.”
However, Dan Apfel — the former executive director for Responsible Endowments Coalition, which advocates for ethical investing in higher education — said the university’s Granite Ridge holdings appear to violate its divestment commitment.
“Its primary business is the ownership of fossil fuels, which get produced and sold,” Apfel told The Hoya. “That’s how they make money. In my opinion, that is a primary violation of ‘the exploration or extraction of fossil fuels.’”
“If they want to read it not as a violation of the language, they’re being very cynical,” Apfel added.
Multiple experts said that Georgetown’s holdings in Granite Ridge should be classed as public securities, despite the university’s claim that they should remain as private investments.
Apfel said the divestment policy should apply to the current status of holdings, regardless of whether they were public or private in the university’s portfolio at the time of its passage.
“The policy does not state, ‘Take a snapshot of the date of the policy, and then things will be traded as they are in that moment for every date in the future,’” Apfel said. “The logical, the simplest reading of it is that shares that have become public are then public.”
“I would normally be quite willing to give someone some grace in terms of their plan to sell them, but saying they’re going to do it in the private company timeline seems silly,” Apfel added.
Todd Ely, a public administration professor at the University of Colorado Denver, said the university chose a specific interpretation of its policy that neglects the divestment commitment’s spirit.
“The policy intent is quite clear: These direct holdings should divest from oil and gas production,” Ely told The Hoya. “And the reality is that that’s exactly what this investment is. It’s a direct holding of a publicly traded security that is involved in oil and gas production.”
“It hadn’t been a public security until it converted, but definitely at this point it’s part of their direct holdings,” Ely added.
The university spokesperson said Georgetown “remains committed” to its investment plan.
The decision to divest followed an eight-year campaign by GU Fossil Free (GUFF), an undergraduate group that advocated environmentally responsible investing, and a student referendum supporting the cause.
Caroline DeLoach (COL ’16), GUFF’s founder, said Georgetown’s continued holdings disappoint her.
“I really can’t think of a defensible reason why this investment wouldn’t constitute a breach of the divestment promises that have been made,” DeLoach told The Hoya.
Student environmental advocates have previously raised concerns over the opacity of the university’s divestment process and called on the Investment Office, which manages the endowment, to provide regular updates on their progress.
Theo Montgomery (SFS ’18), another GUFF member, said the university owes the public greater transparency into these commitments.
“My sincere hope is that this is an oversight, a miscommunication or falls within the policy and is in the process of being divested for some reason or another,” Montgomery told The Hoya. “If that’s not the case, it does raise really serious questions about the transparency of the endowment office. Is their action as good as their word?”
DeLoach said Georgetown’s continued holdings have diminished her faith in the university.
“I think we all want to be able to trust Georgetown and give it the benefit of the doubt that divestment has occurred as promised, but I think that this is a reason to think that it hasn’t — that some trust has been broken here,” Deloach said.
