EXIM Lent Nearly $1 Billion to Fossil Fuel Projects in 2023

(New Republic, New York, 28 December 2023) President Joe Biden pledged to stop financing such projects overseas, and yet the U.S. Export-Import Bank continues to do so. While much of the country was occupied last week with holiday travel and time with family, a little-known government agency approved a $90 million guarantee for ING Capital to finance a liquified natural gas export facility in Texas. All told this year, that agency—the U.S. Export-Import Bank—has approved nearly $1 billion in fossil fuel lending, including $100 million for expanding an oil refinery in Indonesia and $400 million of insurance for revolving credit facilities to help commodity trading giant Trafigura purchase LNG. Not long after taking office, in January 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order which tasked the bank and other federal agencies with identifying “steps through which the United States can promote ending international financing of carbon-intensive fossil fuel–based energy.”