OPIC votes to accelerate climate crisis

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The board of directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation late yesterday approved $450 million in financing for a series of unconventional oil and gas projects in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta region.

In response, Karen Orenstein, Deputy Director of Economic Policy at Friends of the Earth, issued the following statement: 

Ending nearly 50 years in business, yesterday OPIC’s board of directors put their heads in the sand and approved $450 million for two major fracking projects in Argentina.

OPIC’s actions are a textbook example of a development finance institution causing irreparable damage at the local and global levels. These projects will harm the people of Argentina financially, economically, developmentally and environmentally. The board should have acted responsibly, but instead it chose to go out with a climate-polluting bang, adding another feather in the cap of Trump’s climate-and-science-denying zealotry.

Expert contact: Karen Orenstein, (202) 640-8679, [email protected]
Communications contact: Patrick Davis, (202) 222-0744, [email protected]