U.S. EXIM Funding Fossil Fuels Abroad

(Living on Earth, Lee NH, 3 May 2024) Despite an international agreement to phase out financing for fossil fuel projects abroad, the Biden administration recently approved a $500 million dollar loan guarantee for an oil and gas drilling project in Bahrain. The Biden-Harris administration is coming under fire for failing to keep its promise to stop funding international fossil fuel projects. One of those critics is Nina Pušić, senior climate finance analyst with the advocacy group Oil Change International. At the U.N. Climate Conference in 2021, which was called COP26 in Glasgow, 39 governments and public finance institutions signed on to this initiative called the Clean Energy Transition partnership, also known as the Glasgow Statement. They promised that within one year they would stop new direct financial support to fossil fuel projects within the year. It was the Biden administration who signed on. So even though the Biden administration has promised that U.S. government agencies would stop funding fossil fuels, U.S. EXIM and DFC have decided that they're going to continue doing that regardless. And it wasn't just at the U.N. Climate Conference in 2021 where the Biden administration signed on to this, but it was also at the G7 in 2022. So it's not only one but actually two international commitments that this administration made.