Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, which brings together 14 of the 18 regional federations of the group and the CIC, hardened its position on Thursday on companies developing new oil and gas projects, a form of concretization of a commitment made at the end of 2021.
From the second half of 2024, Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale will stop its financing and interventions with companies that continue to develop new oil or gas exploration and production projects, explains the bank in a press release. In concrete terms, the group will stop financing any company whose production increases from one year to the next.
Director of the environmental NGO Reclaim Finance, Lucie Pinson, however, points to the absence of specific requirements on the level of production decline and on the possibility for the companies concerned to sell oil or gas assets in order to meet these requirements.
Responsibility of banks in global warming
This announcement is the fulfillment of a promise dating from October 2021, when Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale pledged to no longer directly finance new projects. He had also promised to dialogue with the companies in his portfolio in order to convince them to give up developing new oil and gas fields after a short chance, under penalty of being excluded from future support.
This new commitment comes as several NGOs, including Reclaim Finance, published a report on Thursday on the responsibility of French banks in global warming, the main European supporters of the expansion of fossil fuels last year.
According to this study, the top nine American and European oil and gas companies, including TotalEnergies, BP and Eni, collectively received $11.9 billion in financing from French banks last year. A study with fanciful figures, according to the French Banking Federation (FBF).
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