World's Biggest Banks Boost Fossil Fuel Funding In 2017 By 11% YOY, Esp. Tar Sands

[hatrack]

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The researchers assessed 36 private banks from Australia, Canada, China, Europe, Japan, and the United States. Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto Dominion Bank, and JPMorgan Chase all surpassed Chinese banks to become the biggest bankers of fossil fuel projects. JPMorgan Chase, for example, increased funding to coal mining by 21 times and quadrupled its financing of tar sands oil.

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According to the report, banks did not suddenly decide in 2017 that tar sands oil is a great long-term prospect. Rather, the increase in funding was in large part to finance the purchase by Canadian companies of the tar sands reserves sold off by oil majors who deemed the polluting fossil fuel too expensive to continue extracting. Companies like Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Statoil sold more than $23 billion in Canadian assets in 2017 in order to focus on lower-cost reserves elsewhere.

The increase in banks’ support for tar sands in 2017 — to nearly $47 billion — led this sector to overtake investment in coal power, the best funded of the extreme fossil sectors in 2016, according to the report. “Every single dollar that these banks provide for the expansion of the fossil fuel industry is a dollar going to increase the climate crisis,” Stephen Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, an independent anti-fossil fuel research group, said in a statement.

The surge in bank financing for fossil fuel projects, primarily for the acquisition of assets in the Canadian tar sands, coincided with President Trump pushing what he called a “new era of American energy dominance.” Last summer, Trump announced that the Department of Treasury would remove barriers to U.S. government financing of new coal plants overseas. Led by the Obama administration, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reached an agreement in 2015 that removed financial support for large coal-fired power plants, while allowing support for smaller coal plants in developing countries.

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https://thinkprogress.org/banks-go-back-to-investing-in-fossil-fuels-73a3fa15d65c/

[Wwcd]

1. And Tar Sands is owned by Koch.

They hold thousands of acres of royalties in the Tar Sands, for starters.

[OnlinePoker]

2. Some of the oil sands, not all. n/t

[Wwcd]

3. As stated. They own thousands of mineral acres with royalty payment potential.

They are the biggest promoters of the sludgy goo from the Tar Sands. It has to be thinned with lighter oil from the Bakken in NDak to move it across the country through a pipeline. It erodes the inside of the steel pipeline its moved thru.

Kochs love it.