Friends of the Earth USA

Amid Corruption Charges, Groups Demand EXIM Halt Payments to Trafigura

(Friends of the Earth, Washington, 23 January 2024) Civil society and environmental groups today requested that the US Export-Import Bank withdraw funding from the Trafigura Group, a major global commodity trader. In December, Bloomberg reported that Trafigura was charged with corruption and bribing elected officials in Angola. In an open letter to EXIM, asking the bank to halt its payment of $400 million to Trafigura, a financing agreement that was approved in July 2023. This letter questions EXIM’s due process in analyzing funding recipients and its method of reconsideration when corruption is revealed. This comes on the heels of both the United States and Swiss governments launching investigations into the company’s affairs. Despite this, EXIM last year gave Trafigura the massive financing of $400 million to purchase liquefied natural gas, a decision the groups charge was made based on flawed environmental damage assessments. EXIM is soon expected to approve $660 million for the Gas to Energy Project in Guyana, despite similar concerns from activists. In 2023 the institution funded nearly $1 billion for overseas oil and gas development, violating President Biden’s 2021 Executive Order.

Biden Administration Faces Pushback on Another Gas Project, This Time Overseas

(New York Times, New York, 26 January 2024) Even as the Biden administration, under pressure from environmentalists, hits pause on its approval of a major natural gas export terminal in the United States, it faces another big gas decision overseas. A $13 billion natural gas export project in Papua New Guinea led by TotalEnergies and Exxon Mobil is on a shortlist of projects set to receive financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, or Ex-Im, which supports American businesses around the world.The Papua LNG gas project would join a portfolio of oil and gas projects the bank funds, including an oil refinery in Indonesia and an oil tank project in the Bahamas. The bank is also considering financing an offshore pipeline and natural gas plants in Guyana. Some climate activists see a big contradiction between climate actions the government is taking in the United States versus around the world. “He’s done so much at home,” said Friends of the Earth’s Kate DeAngeli, but he “can’t claim to be a climate champion when the U.S. is propping up this fossil fuel infrastructure all over the world.”

FOE investigates EXIM fossil fuel influence peddling in Alaska carbon bomb

(Friends of the Earth, Washington, 13 April 2023) Friends of the Earth has filed an open records request of the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC), the state entity developing the Alaska LNG Project–a proposed $38.7 billion LNG project with a potential carbon footprint of 2.7 billion metric tons of CO2, ten times the climate pollution of the recently approved Willow Project. The Alaska LNG Project is already angling for significant federal subsidies. A provision snuck into the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) makes the project potentially eligible for a $25.6 billion loan guarantee. The project was also “provided official correspondence” that it will receive a Letter of Interest from the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM), the export credit agency of the US. Thanks to its new Make More in America Initiative, passed in 2022 and widely seen as benefiting LNG developers, EXIM can now finance domestic projects like Alaska LNG as well as international ones. “Hopefully the Biden Administration isn’t about to greenlight another carbon bomb,” said Lukas Ross, Program Manager at Friends of the Earth. “A story about two former fossil fuel executives shaping climate policy seems like something out of the Trump Administration.”

ECAs of a wide range of OECD countries still finance oil and gas

(Energy Monitor, London, 17 April 2023) All 38 members of the OECD have pledged to reach net zero, with the US and EU in the middle of hugely significant domestic decarbonisation programmes. Yet export finance remains misaligned with the requirements of net zero, directing seven times more support to fossil fuels ($33.5bn per year) than renewables (just $4.7bn per year) on average from 2019 to 2021, according to the OCI. Between 2019 and 2021, OECD ECAs were the world’s largest public international financiers of energy projects. Although China is not subject to the OECD Arrangement guidelines, “a general trend has seen Chinese international public finance eventually follow the OECD guidelines, which also help shape G7 and G20 commitments”, says Nina Pušić, from the NGO Oil Change International (OCI). China’s international coal financing ban, for example, came into effect the same year that the OECD ECAs introduced a similar ban. OECD ECAs (most notably Japan, South Korea and Canada) were the world’s largest public international financiers of oil and gas between 2019 and 2021. Canada has since implemented a pledge made at COP26 to end export finance for oil and gas, but others, including Japan, the US and South Korea, have yet to either make such a pledge or fully follow on through on it. There is a campaign under way from 175 civil society groups from more than 45 countries – including the OCI, the Club of Rome and Friends of the Earth – for the OECD to phase out international public financing of fossil fuels.