ING toughens oil and gas policy to include trade finance, midstream

LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) – Dutch lender ING (INGA.AS) on Tuesday mentioned it had once more toughened its lending coverage to the oil and fuel sector, proscribing finance to purchasers engaged in commodity or commerce finance and “midstream” infrastructure.

ING, a number one supplier of commodity finance, mentioned it was engaged on a technique to scale back the volumes of traded oil and fuel it funds according to international local weather targets with a view to setting targets by 2024.

Commodity commerce finance covers many kinds of loans, most of that are for lower than a 12 months, that facilitate international motion of products from wheat to gasoline. As of but, not one of the largest TCF banks have launched climate-related restrictions to this a part of its lending e-book, ING mentioned, although Rabobank has finished so.

The financial institution’s transfer to limit its exercise displays the actual fact the world must be much less depending on oil and fuel – and is a sizeable a part of ING’s publicity to the sector — Anne-Sophie Castelnau, international head of sustainability at ING instructed Reuters.

“By committing ourselves on this path, we’re sending a sign to our purchasers that we’re actively engaged in taking actions towards decarbonising our portfolio and progressively stepping out of that trade,” she mentioned.

ING mentioned it will look to chop the emissions linked to the quantity of traded oil and fuel it funds by 19% by 2030, according to the Worldwide Power Company’s Web-Zero Emissions by 2050 Roadmap.

ING additionally mentioned it can now not present devoted finance to “midstream” infrastructure actions equivalent to processing and storage that helps new oil and fuel fields to be developed.

The financial institution’s lending to midstream oil and fuel was about $14 billion on the finish of 2022, with about 10% of that linked to new oil and fields and therefore coated by the brand new targets, Castelnau mentioned.

Final 12 months ING mentioned it will not present devoted upstream finance to new oil and fuel fields. Its publicity to this phase stood at 3.1 billion euros on the finish of 2021.

“The thought is to consider suggestions from the Worldwide Power Company (IEA) that the world doesn’t want new oil fields,” Castelnau added.

Reporting by Virginia Furness; enhancing by Simon Jessop and Tomasz Janowski

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