A ballot on the re-election of Cairn Energy chairman Sir Bill Gammell resulted in nearly 6% of investor votes rejecting the move yesterday.
It is the second year in a row that the Edinburgh-based oil company has faced a sizeable shareholder revolt.
Last year, nearly 70% of investor votes rejected its executive pay deals and a ballot on the re-election of Sir Bill resulted in an 11% protest.
Cairn’s latest remuneration report was backed overwhelmingly at yesterday’s annual meeting, which came after the firm’s operating losses narrowed to £163.7million in 2012, from £752.4million the year before. Pre-tax losses last year were £128.6million, against £787.5million in 2011.
In an interim management statement, Cairn said it was on track with plans for a frontier multi-well exploration programme starting later this year.
The firm added that it was targeting more than 3.5billion barrels of oil equivalent of “gross resource” in the Atlantic margin, testing a variety of play types and prospects in Senegal, Morocco, Ireland and Greenland offering shareholders “good organic growth potential”.
Acquisitions, farm-ins, ongoing exploration work and bid round successes have left Cairn with an inventory comprising 61 prospects and 124 leads, which the firm said was constantly evolving and growing as more information was gathered and evaluated.
Chief executive Simon Thomson said: “Cairn is a well funded business, with a balanced portfolio of potentially high-growth assets.”
The company also said it intended to announce results for the first half of 2013 on Tuesday, August 20.
Activists from Friends of the Earth (FoE) Scotland gathered outside Cairn’s AGM in Edinburgh, dressed as cowboys to register their protest at the firm’s pursuit of oil offshore Greenland.
Environmental organisations say the company’s activities threaten the fragile Arctic environment.
FoE Scotland campaigner Paul Daly said: “We urgently need to kick our addiction to fossil fuels to avoid disastrous climate change, not take advantage of its impacts to find and burn ever more oil.