[ Ukrainian campaigners call for immediate end to investments, to
cut funds to war and help avoid climate breakdown]
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UK AND US BANKS AMONG BIGGEST BACKERS OF RUSSIAN ‘CARBON BOMBS’,
DATA SHOWS  
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Damian Carrington
August 24, 2022
The Guardian
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_ Ukrainian campaigners call for immediate end to investments, to cut
funds to war and help avoid climate breakdown _

Canary Wharf, where HSBC, JPMorgan Chase and other global banking
corporations have offices, is seen from Greenwich, southeast London. ,
Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

 

US and UK financial institutions have been among the leading investors
in Russian “carbon bomb” fossil fuel projects, according to a new
database of holdings from recent years.

Campaigners in Ukraine
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must immediately end such investments, to limit the funding of
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and to avoid climate breakdown.

Carbon bombs are fossil-fuel extraction projects identified by
researchers to contain at least 1bn tonnes of climate-heating CO2,
triple the UK’s annual emissions. Russia is a hotspot, with 40
carbon bombs, 19 of them operated or developed by Russian companies
backed by foreign finance. The companies are Gazprom
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Rosneft oil company and Tatneft.

The database
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produced by the Leave it in the Ground Initiative (Lingo)
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financial institutions had provided $130bn (£109bn) of support to the
Russian companies – $52bn in investment and $84bn in credit. The
data was released on Wednesday, Ukraine’s independence day and six
months since the start of the Russian invasion.

Financial institutions in the US hold almost half the foreign
investment in Russian carbon bomb companies, with 154 institutions
holding $23.6bn. The largest combination of investment and credit –
$10bn – was provided by JPMorgan Chase, which other analyses have
also identified as a leading funder of fossil fuels
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The biggest single investment in the Russian carbon bomb companies was
the $15.3bn in Rosneft held by the Qatar Investment Authority,
Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.

The UK was third in the list of investing nations, with 32 financial
institutions holding $2.5bn in investments. HSBC
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investment and credit total, at $308m. Financial groups in Japan,
Norway, Switzerland and the Netherlands also held significant
investments, while Chinese and Italian institutions provided $45bn in
credit between them.

“Putin’s war is funded through money from fossil fuels and these
fossil fuels are causing climate breakdown as we speak,” said
Svitlana Romanko, director of the Ukrainian NGO Razom We Stand, which
is calling for an immediate end to all foreign investment in Russian
fossil fuel companies and a permanent embargo on Russian oil, gas and
coal. “Investing in Russian carbon bombs is the worst thing you can
do today.”

Kjell Kühne, at Lingo, said: “This [war] has made really clear
that, when you don’t care who you’re doing business with, it does
translate into human suffering and lives lost. It’s also clear we
should not be investing in new fossil fuel projects, as the
International Energy Agency has confirmed
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Anybody involved in these projects should be really questioning what
they’re doing.”

The Lingo researchers said some financial institutions may have
reduced their support for the Russian companies since the war started,
but that many seemed to have adopted a wait-and-see approach. The
researchers hope the database will enable campaigners to challenge the
400 institutions over their investments.

The foreign financial support is largely for big oil and gas projects
in Russia, including in Siberia and the Arctic. Coal projects are
mainly supported by domestic investors, the researchers said. The
database only includes financial support for the Russian fossil fuel
companies and not for foreign oil and gas companies that work in
Russia, or the services companies that support them.

In May, the Guardian revealed that world’s biggest fossil fuel
firms were quietly planning huge oil and gas projects
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would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature
limits, with catastrophic global impacts. The plans included 195
carbon bombs identified by Kühne and his colleagues, 60% of which
have already started pumping. “We have identified the carbon bombs,
now we have to defuse them,” he said.

A spokeswoman for HSBC said: “HSBC Asset Management has suspended
dealings in its Russia-only funds which include the Russian oil and
gas companies referenced and [is] no longer investing further in funds
whose objectives included investing in Russian securities. In these
funds, exposure to Russian equities has generally been reduced or
exited.”

JPMorgan Chase and the Qatar Investment Authority have also been
contacted for comment.

_Damian Carrington is the Guardian's Environment editor_

* Fossil Fuel Investments
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* Russia
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* U.S. banks
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