EXIM Sends Late Christmas Gift to Exxon, Approving Guyana Gas Deal
WASHINGTON – Today the US Export-Import Bank quietly voted on and presumably awarded a $526 million loan agreement to ExxonMobil and partners for a massive gas project in Guyana. This approval occurred despite serious complaints of pollution and harms to the community raised by Guyanese activists. According to IEEFA, the project will result in a substantially overbuilt electrical system.
This is the second year in a row that EXIM has snuck in a new loan for fossil fuels around the Christmas holiday. In 2023 the agency approved a second, $90 million for a Freeport LNG project, using faulty logic and ignoring the disastrous impacts from EXIM’s first loan.
With the approval of the Guyana gas project, EXIM’s support for fossil fuels since May 2023 totals nearly $3 billion.
Kate DeAngelis, Deputy Director of International Finance at Friends of the Earth, said this:
Sneaking in a loan deal for a massive planet polluter seems to check off Big Oil’s Christmas list. Investing in solar energy in Guyana would cost less, reduce costs for ratepayers and generate more local jobs, yet EXIM is intent on pleasing our planet’s biggest polluters and making the Guyana people pay. We are disgusted by EXIM’s underhanded manner with this project, and by its blatant disrespect toward Guyanese voices.
Contact: Shaye Skiff, [email protected]