Petroperú Desperate for Cash Loses $500M SACE Loan Guarantee

(Amazon Watch, Oakland, 25 January 2024) In 2023, the Peruvian state-owned oil company, Petroperú, faced one of its worst financial crises, due to its accumulation of up to $6.5 billion in debt for its Talara Refinery Project, which will likely serve as a major driver of oil exploration and exploitation in Indigenous territories of the Amazon and in ancestral fishing grounds in the north Peruvian coast. Due to successful community opposition against oil activities, Petroperú was unable to secure a $500 million loan guarantee in 2023 from Italy’s export credit agency (SACE) partly due to intense scrutiny from Indigenous nations and strong backlash against Petroperú in Italy. The world’s largest fossil fuel financiers, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, are considering supporting the company again by arranging or underwriting Petroperú’s $1 billion bond issuance. This is despite ongoing demands by a united front of multiple Indigenous nations of the Peruvian Amazon for international financiers to halt new financing for Petroperú.