A recent report entitled “Banking on Climate Chaos” by the Rainforest Action Network and others sets out a comprehensive global analysis on the extent to which banks are continuing to lend to fossil fuel projects. It singles out US Banks as the single worst grouping of fossil banks, with the top four fossil fuel funders in the world (JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America) all headquartered in the U.S., joined by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in the top 14. Together, these six banks provided 29% of fossil fuel financing identified in 2021. It also points to how many banks with net-zero commitments last year also financed the top 20 upstream oil and gas expansion companies. It reports that of the 60 banks analysed, 28 led financing for the top 20 upstream oil and gas expansion companies in 2021. African projects included in the study were the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (TotalEnergies, CNOOC), Nigeria’s LNG Train 7 (Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., Shell, TotalEnergies, Eni), the Offshore Cape Three Points off the coast of Ghana (Eni, Vitol, GNPC), and the LNG project off the coast of Mozambique (TotalEnergies, Mitsui, ENH).
