Small banks significantly boost loans to oil and gas firms

While major European banks are competing to announce new policies limiting funding to oil and gas projects, smaller regional U.S. banks have boosted significantly their lending to oil and gas firms over the past two years.

Regional banks BOK Financial, Citizens Financial, Truist Securities, Fifth Third Securities, and US Bancorp have seen their combined loans to the fossil fuel industry jump by over 70% on an average annualized basis since the beginning of 2022, compared to the previous six years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

These five banks are now among the world’s top 35 banks in terms of the number of deals they have signed with the fossil fuel industry, Bloomberg’s data showed.

Total global financing for fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement has been led by the biggest U.S. banks, with JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America placing #1 through #4, respectively, with billions of U.S. dollars of financing for oil and gas between 2016 and 2022, according to research by environmental campaigners.

Regional U.S. banks are also seeing a growing pool of customers in the fossil fuel industry. This comes as European banks are re-evaluating their funding for oil and gas, and energy-rich U.S. states are leading an anti-ESG drive to blacklist major financial corporations and asset managers, which they believe are discriminating against the oil and gas industry.

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Source: Oil Price

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