More Greenwash Giggles! Major Banks "Withdrawing" From Arctic Oil Seldom, If Ever Loan For It
Over the last several months, some of the nation's biggest banks announced they will not finance new oil and gas development in the Arctic. The new policies are the first steps by American banks to restrict lending to the oil industry, and they come after years of campaigning by environmental groups.
But a close look reveals that the policies may not amount to much at all. That's because they generally limit only direct funding for Arctic operations, while banks rarely, if ever, provide such loans. In fact, amid trillions of dollars in energy industry financing that advocacy groups have tracked over the last few years, not a single loan represented the type of deal that would be prohibited under the new policies. "It's safe to say that project financing in particular for extraction in the Arctic is very rare," said Alison Kirsch, a researcher with Rainforest Action Network, which publishes an annual report tracking fossil fuel financing.
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European and Australian banks were among the first to adopt policies restricting lending, with Goldman Sachs the first American bank to announce one in December. According to Rainforest Action Network, at least 20 banks have now implemented some form of restrictions, six of which include broader corporate-wide limitations for companies operating in the Arctic.
For the banks, it may have been an easy sell. Oil prices had stagnated after crashing in 2014, and fracking was surging in Texas, North Dakota and other states, leaving the Arctic as a side story for much of the industry. Even before the campaign, one Goldman Sachs analyst told CNBC in 2017, "We think there is almost no rationale for Arctic exploration," noting the abundance of other, cheaper options for growth, such as U.S. shale fields. Citigroup said in its announcement last month that it had never provided the type of project-specific financing it would now prohibit, and Wells Fargo said in its policy that it had actually halted such lending two years earlier as "part of a larger 2018 risk-based decision."
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04052020/oil-gas-banks-arctic-drilling-coronavirus
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