BP was given a bloody nose yesterday as 12 per cent of its shareholders voted against top executive pay packages at a colourful annual general meeting in which environmental protesters were forceably carried out of the building.

Including abstentions, about 13.3 per cent of BP shareholders who voted by proxy failed to back BP's remuneration report. Their chief concern was the decision to award chief executive Bob Dudley £4.3m in salary and bonuses last year – a move which Pirc, the shareholder advisory group, recommended its members oppose.

Pirc argued that Mr Dudley's pay was "difficult to justify" in a year which saw BP's already depressed shares slump by a further 5 per cent.

Shareholders also registered their disapproval of Carl-Henric Svanson, with 8.5 per cent failing to back his reappointment.

But while some investors quietly voted against the scale of pay, others were more vocal about environmental concerns, with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 and BP's involvement in Canadian tar sands high on their agenda.

In the most dramatic part of a frequently testy annual general meeting at the Excel Centre in London's Docklands, one investor accused BP of hastening the demise of the planet.

At this point he was joined by fellow protesters, who promptly fell to the floor pretending to die and were carried out by security guards in front of the packed gathering.

Frustration was also expressed outside the meeting, as Gulf Coast and tar sands activists joined forces. "The clean-up is not complete," said Derrick Evans, from Gulfport in Mississippi. Oil washes ashore with unprecedented frequency, bringing dead sea life."