EXTRACTED: Daily News Clips 1/10/22
PIPELINE NEWS
The Intercept: PROSECUTORS HIT ANTI-PIPELINE PROTESTERS WITH FELONY CHARGES TO SEND A MESSAGE, DEFENSE SAYS
Roanoke Times: Legal fights continue over the Mountain Valley Pipeline
Bloomberg: New Gulf Coast link boosts Canada’s oil sands producers
TheEnergyMix: ANALYSIS: Coastal GasLink, LNG Controversies Will Haunt B.C. NDP in 2022
SELC: Rejected: State denies Chickahominy Pipeline plan for 83-mile unregulated gas line
Grist: Pipelines keep robbing the land long after the bulldozers leave
Reuters: Pipeline operator Enterprise to buy Navitas from Warburg for $3.3 billion
WASHINGTON UPDATES
Associated Press: Climate change rally ends at Biden’s Wilmington home
Politico: CEQ LOSES EJ LEAD
STATE UPDATES
Colorado Sun: Colorado communities brace for daily trains carrying crude oil following approval of Utah’s Uinta Basin Railway
NM Political Report: BLM hosts roundtable discussion about federal funding for orphaned wells
NOLA.com: Home to 4,605 orphan oil and gas wells, Louisiana seeks federal money to plug them
EXTRACTION
Canadian Press: Survey finds oilsands environmental monitoring ineffective after 10 years
E&E News: CCS ‘red flag?’ World’s sole coal project hits snag
Bloomberg: ‘Crazy’ Carbon Offsets Market Prompts Calls for Regulation
Reuters: Analysis-Shrink to fit: the year Big Oil starts to become Small Oil
CLIMATE FINANCE
Financial Times: Banks risk becoming new fossil fuel villains in 2022
OPINION
Sierra Club: Why Is the Biden White House Refusing to Confront the Oil and Gas Industry?
Globe and Mail: Canada has committed to halt financing to the oil and gas industry. To understand what that really means, watch for the fine print
PIPELINE NEWS
The Intercept: PROSECUTORS HIT ANTI-PIPELINE PROTESTERS WITH FELONY CHARGES TO SEND A MESSAGE, DEFENSE SAYS
Alleen Brown, Sam Richards, 1/8/22
“Months after the pipeline company Enbridge announced it had finished its Line 3 pipeline, hundreds of the project’s opponents have pending court cases for arrests made at protests during last year’s construction,” The Intercept reports. “Defense attorneys for the water protectors, as the members of the Indigenous-led anti-pipeline movement are known, told the Intercept many of the charges are overly aggressive and should be dismissed. Defense attorneys pointed to examples like felony theft charges for protesters who chained themselves to equipment and felony aiding attempted suicide for those who crawled into sections of nonfunctional pipe. “These felony theft charges started coming out during the summer and it’s very clearly an abuse of the prosecutorial charging function,” Joshua Preston, a lawyer for the water protectors, told the Intercept. “It’s meant to send a message saying, ‘If you come to this property and chain yourself to something, we’re going to throw the book at you.’” One of the county attorneys pursuing felony theft charges said the indictments were appropriate. “Criminal felony theft meets the elements of the offense,” Hubbard County, Minnesota, Attorney Jonathan Frieden told the Intercept… “In addition to the aggressive legal tactics, new questions are being raised this week about the relationship between prosecutors in Minnesota, where the opposition was concentrated, and the pipeline company. Documents published this week by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Center for Protest Law and Litigation, which is representing pipeline opponents, show that Frieden sought reimbursement from an Enbridge-funded state escrow account to pursue charges against the corporation’s opponents. The requests were denied.”
Roanoke Times: Legal fights continue over the Mountain Valley Pipeline
Laurence Hammack, 1/8/22
“While cutting a 303-mile-long scar along the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia, the construction of a natural gas pipeline has also left a long trail of litigation with no end in sight,” the Roanoke Times reports. “Four years ago, after the first trees were felled and a 125-foot-wide strip of land was cleared for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, lawsuits by environmental groups soon followed. A federal appeals court has struck down enough government permits to delay — but not to kill, at least so far — the $6.2 billion project. Three new legal challenges were filed in the past month. Since 2017, there have been at least 56 civil actions brought in state and federal courts in Virginia. “Mountain Valley Pipeline has faced an unusually high volume of litigation because it is an unusually unwise and unneeded project,” Gillian Giannetti, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Times. “...Many of the lawsuits have been filed and financed by a coalition of national, state and community environmental groups — from heavyweights such as the Sierra Club to local groups like Preserve Craig County. Even if this pipeline survives, opponents say their legal battle will not be a lost cause. “You haven’t seen another huge, several hundred mile pipeline proposed since Mountain Valley,” Giannetti, whose national nonprofit based in New York is not a plaintiff in the cases, told the Times. Developers know that a similar venture today would be met by “an army” of opposition, she said.”
Bloomberg: New Gulf Coast link boosts Canada’s oil sands producers
DEVIKA KRISHNA KUMAR, 1/9/22
“Canada’s oil sands producers were able to export a record amount of crude to overseas markets thanks to a new link to the US Gulf Coast,” Bloomberg reports. “The recent reversal of Marathon Pipe Line’s Capline pipeline is sending oil sands crude produced in landlocked Alberta to export terminals on the Gulf Coast where it can be shipped to other countries. Exports to Asia were at their highest level, with India the leading destination by far, followed by China and then South Korea, according to oil analytics firm Kpler. The development marks a sea change for Canada’s oil industry. The country holds the third highest crude reserves in the world, but exports to markets beyond the US have been limited due to a lack of infrastructure. Canada has faced severe opposition from activists for building pipelines from the oil sands region to British Columbia’s Pacific Coast. Additionally, the Biden administration in 2021 blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, effectively shutting Canada’s crude out of the global market. “Looking ahead, Canadian crude exports out of the US Gulf should continue to show strength,” Matt Smith, oil analyst at Kpler, told Bloomberg. “With Venezuelan crude exports having tanked in recent years, and now with the prospect of Mexican crude being taken off the market, Canadian crude appears to be one of the leading beneficiaries of these changing dynamics.”
TheEnergyMix: ANALYSIS: Coastal GasLink, LNG Controversies Will Haunt B.C. NDP in 2022
Mitchell Beer, 1/10/22
“A major piece of unfinished business left behind at the end of last year looks certain to haunt British Columbia in 2022, as the province’s NDP government faces determined Indigenous opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the project itself runs into serious financial headwinds,” TheEnergyMix reports. “As 2021 drew to a close, the government of Premier John Horgan faced a mini-revolt within the New Democratic Party over its support for Coastal GasLink (CGL) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) development. CGL parent company TC Energy was in the midst of tough negotiations over project delays and cost overruns, and Wet’suwet’en water protectors had reoccupied a key pipeline construction site and evicted CGL work crews. In the new year, analysts tell The Energy Mix, the project’s tenuous business case could become even more fragile, with the province’s longstanding dreams of an LNG boom and the success of its highly-touted climate plan hanging in the balance… “Convention delegates heard repeated calls to cut off fossil subsidies and end support for the LNG Canada and Coastal GasLink projects from North Island delegate Ashley Zarbatany, chair of the party’s environment and economy committee, and former federal candidate Avi Lewis, The Tyee reported. “We can’t continue to underwrite and finance on the taxpayer dime LNG Canada,” Zarbatany told the convention. “It’s like paying for suicide, so I cannot support that.” “I know, as so many of you know, there’s a pipeline-sized elephant in the room at this convention and in this province,” Lewis said. “It is our government’s continued support of fossil fuel expansion in the very teeth of a climate change emergency.”
SELC: Rejected: State denies Chickahominy Pipeline plan for 83-mile unregulated gas line
1/7/22
“The Virginia State Corporation Commission rejected plans to construct an unregulated gas pipeline 83 miles from Louisa County to a proposed gas-fired power plant in Charles City County. “The Chickahominy Pipeline would be a backwards-looking investment in so-called ‘natural gas’ at a time when Virginia has committed to a clean, zero-carbon energy grid,” said SELC Senior Attorney Greg Buppert. “The Commission’s full oversight of this climate-warming project is necessary to protect the public interest.” SELC represented Concerned Citizens of Charles City County, Hanover Citizens Against A Pipeline, Appalachian Voices, and Chesapeake Bay Foundation in the case where the state’s SCC determined that Chickahominy Pipeline, LLC is a public utility subject to commission regulation. This victory means people living in the path of the pipeline will have a greater say in a proposal that threatens their way of life. The proposed pipeline would have serviced the as-yet-unbuilt Chickahominy Power Station, a 1600-megawatt power plant that, if constructed, would be one of the largest gas plants in the state. Virginia environmental regulators approved an air pollution permit in 2019 for the plant over the objections of local residents in Charles City County, many of whom were not allowed to speak during a final hearing on the project.”
Grist: Pipelines keep robbing the land long after the bulldozers leave
Jena Brooker, 1/7/22
“Before it began digging into the earth to bury its two-and-half-foot-wide, 1,172-mile-long pipeline in the ground, Dakota Access, LLC promised to restore the land to its previous condition when construction was finished,” Grist reports. “... But farmers in the path of the pipeline have a different story to tell – one of broken promises and sustained damage to their land. Now, there’s data to back them up. Researchers at Iowa State University found that in the two years following construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline corn yields in the 150-foot right-of-way declined by 15 percent. Soybean yields dropped by 25 percent. One of the selling points that energy companies often tout is that pipeline infrastructure is seemingly invisible, buried and forgotten over the long run. The new study, published in the journal Soil Use and Management, seems to contradict that claim… “Every pipeline site is going to be slightly different, but there is a general trend of degradation overall,” Theresa Brehm, one of the researchers and a graduate student at Ohio State University, told Grist… “Sautter told Grist the impact of the pipeline’s destruction on his land has been emotional. “Here’s something that happened to your land that you would never think about doing yourself – taking a 150-foot swath, turning the soil upside down, mixing it together with rocks and subsoil, and laying it back down to try to grow something,” he said.
Reuters: Pipeline operator Enterprise to buy Navitas from Warburg for $3.3 billion
1/10/22
“Enterprise Products Partners LP said on Monday it would buy Warburg Pincus-owned natural gas pipeline operator Navitas Midstream for $3.25 billion,” Reuters reports. “Woodlands, Texas-based Navitas owns a network of around 1,750 miles of natural gas pipelines in the Midland portion of the Permian basin, the region of Texas and New Mexico considered the heart of the U.S. shale industry. The sale comes as a surge in demand and supply crunches have pushed natural gas prices to record highs.”
WASHINGTON UPDATES
Associated Press: Climate change rally ends at Biden’s Wilmington home
By Rachel Sawicki, 1/9/22
“At least 40 climate activists assembled outside President Joe Biden’s Wilmington home on Saturday afternoon. The movement, called Occupy Biden, has been camped out round the clock at 909 Centre Road since Christmas Day and ended their week-long occupation with a rally and march,” the Associated Press reports. “Outside of Fairthorne and Barley Mill Court on Barley Mill Road, leaders Karen Igou from Extinction Rebellion Delaware and author Ted Glick conversed with Secret Service members and local police, asking for a phone call with the president. Officials told the protesters they did not have the ability to contact President Biden, but the crowd continued to chant “climate change is class war,” “Biden be bold,” “climate justice now,” and other messages, all demanding action in response to climate change… “Occupy Biden’s mission is to increase pressure on the president to declare a climate emergency and end new fossil fuel projects. The actions are being led by community leaders and supported by dozens of environmental and social justice groups from around the country, and have resulted in hundreds of people taking action. “If (his administration) is saying that (Biden) is doing all he can, that is simply not true,” Ms. Igou said. “When he got back from COP26, he opened up the largest land lease in history for drilling. Our poor Mother Earth is already struggling and suffering, trying to take care of us … not one more carbon emission should happen if we have a chance of having a survivable future.”
Politico: CEQ LOSES EJ LEAD
Matthew Choi, 1/7/22
“Cecilia Martinez, who led the White House’s environmental justice efforts, is leaving the Council on Environmental Quality today,” Politico reports. “Martinez was charged with engaging with environmental justice organizations and working on guidelines for the Justice40 Initiative to deliver 40 percent of federal benefits to disadvantaged communities. Her departure comes as activists seek greater clarity on the details of the administration's environmental justice goals, namely how the benefits will be distributed and how to determine who qualifies for what. “From the campaign and the presidential transition to this critically-important first year of the administration, Cecilia has been the heart, soul, and mind of the most ambitious environmental justice agenda ever adopted by a president,” CEQ Chair Brenda Mallory said in a statement.
STATE UPDATES
Colorado Sun: Colorado communities brace for daily trains carrying crude oil following approval of Utah’s Uinta Basin Railway
Jason Blevins, 1/10/22
“The Surface Transportation Board’s recent approval of a new 88-mile railroad in Utah’s Uinta Basin has spiked concerns that daily trains loaded with heated crude oil will be traveling along Colorado’s river corridors,” the Colorado Sun reports. “It’s a ticking carbon bomb,” Michael Kunkel, whose Friends of Browns Canyon last summer successful campaigned to block an expedited proposal to revive train traffic on the long dormant, 220-mile Tennessee Pass Line between Gypsum and Cañon City, told the Sun. The Tennessee Pass train plan was proposed by Colorado Midland & Pacific, which promised it would only ferry passengers and perhaps construction materials on the mountainous railway owned by Union Pacific that last saw trains in 1997… “The plan to repair dilapidated rail over Tennessee Pass stirred vehement opposition in communities along the line. The fear of Rio Grande Pacific Corp. routing crude through the White River National Forest and along the Arkansas River through Browns Canyon National Monument prodded nearly every town, county and environmental group along the 220-mile stretch to call for extensive environmental review of the plan… “The Surface Transportation Board’s Office of Environmental Analysis issued its final environmental review of the railroad plan in August. The board gave its final approval to the rail plan Dec. 15. It was not a unanimous decision. Board member Martin Oberman, who was designated chairman of the board by President Joe Biden one year ago, refused to support the railroad, saying “the project’s environmental impacts outweigh its transportation merits.”
NM Political Report: BLM hosts roundtable discussion about federal funding for orphaned wells
By Hannah Grover, 1/7/22
“Randy Pacheco, the chief executive officer of the San Juan Basin-based A-Plus Well Service, said the state’s workforce needs to be built up to address the orphaned oil and natural gas wells that dot the landscape in many states including New Mexico,” according to NM Political Report. “Pacheco was one of the panelists who participated in a roundtable-style webinar discussion about the federal orphaned well program and the Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to implement it. The bureau hosted the webinar, which drew hundreds of people, on Thursday. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that was signed into law in November provided $4.7 billion for clean-up, remediation and restoration at orphaned well sites. That led to the U.S. Department of the Interior releasing initial guidelines on Dec. 17 for states to apply for funding… “But environmental activists who took part in the panel said it is important to plug, remediate and reclaim these orphaned well sites to protect human health as well as the environment. Kayley Shoup, a Permian Basin resident and a member of Citizens Caring for Our Future, spoke about people she knows in her community who have cancer or other medical conditions that may be attributed to the oil and gas production. Shoup refers to the Permian Basin as an energy sacrifice zone, or an area that experiences high levels of pollutants so that fossil fuels can be extracted.”
NOLA.com: Home to 4,605 orphan oil and gas wells, Louisiana seeks federal money to plug them
MARK SCHLEIFSTEIN, 1/10/22
“Louisiana is home to 4,605 orphan oil and gas wells, some of them threatening the environment, and now plans to ask the federal government for a Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act grant to help pay the estimated $401.7 million cost of plugging them,” NOLA.com reports. “It's one of 26 states that told federal officials by the Dec. 30 deadline they want part of the $4.7 billion reserved in the law for plugging abandoned wells and restoring associated property. The effort is aimed at both cleaning up environmental issues at the well sites and, by plugging the wells, stopping the release of methane, the carbon-rich main ingredient of natural gas that's been linked to global warming… “In its Dec. 23 declaration of interest in a grant, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources estimated the state lost 12,256 oil and gas industry jobs between March 1, 2020, and Nov. 15, 2021, which represents a 23.4% reduction in that sector in Louisiana. Based on the state's estimates, it would be asking an average of $87,000 for each well it has listed as orphaned. However, the money set aside in the infrastructure bill would only be enough to pay an average $36,000 per well, if all 130,000 abandoned wells identified by Interior were funded. If all of Louisiana's orphan wells were targeted for plugging, the effort could employ about 1,000 people fulltime for a year, and could reduce methane emissions by 558 metric tons per year, according to a 2020 report by Columbia University and Resources for the Future, a Washington D.C. environmental policy think tank. The methane reduction is the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions of more than 3,000 cars.”
EXTRACTION
Canadian Press: Survey finds oilsands environmental monitoring ineffective after 10 years
Bob Weber, 1/9/22
“Alberta doesn't have a good grasp of the overall environmental impacts of the oilsands a decade after implementing monitoring that was supposed to provide it, internal government documents suggest,” the Canadian Press reports. “In July, Alberta Environment and Parks surveyed dozens of scientists and other participants in the Oilsands Monitoring Program, a joint federal-provincial program that has run under various names since 2012 and is funded by an annual $50-million levy from industry. A copy of that survey was obtained by The Canadian Press. Of the 112 people surveyed, 26 responded. They expressed concerns from a lack of overall direction to poor communication to an arbitrary and inadequate funding cap being gradually nibbled away by inflation. "We still have significant concerns with the ... program's ability to develop a robust, world-class monitoring program as intended," said a response from the Alberta Environmental Network, which has delegates on several of the program's technical committees… “Most survey respondents reported there was little communication and co-ordination between different scientific groups. "Communication in the [program] sucks," one respondent wrote. "It is clear that members of committees have no clear direction on the purpose and priorities of the program," wrote another.
E&E News: CCS ‘red flag?’ World’s sole coal project hits snag
By Carlos Anchondo, 1/10/22
“The world’s sole carbon capture project on a large power plant caught 43 percent fewer metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2021 compared with the year before, according to new data from the Canadian utility company operating the project,” E&E News reports. “SaskPower said the drop in captured emissions at the Boundary Dam Power Station near Estevan, Saskatchewan, stems from challenges with the main CO2 compressor motor — forcing its carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility to go offline for multiple months last year. The plant’s backers say the technical issues have been addressed, but critics of carbon capture technology say they are a sign the technology shouldn’t be funded at large coal power plants… “Still, the company’s data showing the CCS facility captured roughly 44 percent of its 90 percent maximum capacity is triggering criticism that Boundary Dam’s Unit 3 is trapping a small fraction of its emissions. The coal plant’s original yearly CO2 capture target was 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gas, according to SaskPower. “The fact that Petra Nova and Boundary Dam both experienced frequent outages during just a few years of operations should serve as a red flag for policymakers and investors considering coal carbon capture proposals,” Joe Smyth, research and communications manager at the Energy and Policy Institute, told E&E.
Bloomberg: ‘Crazy’ Carbon Offsets Market Prompts Calls for Regulation
1/6/222
“When Swedish bank SEB AB announced recently that it wanted to buy into the market for carbon credits, what it got was a pile of duds,” Bloomberg reports. “Hans Beyer, SEB’s chief sustainability officer, told Bloomberg most of the roughly 150 pitches that he received last year weren’t backed by any recognized body validating claims to be permanently removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And some were pitched on the basis of doing nothing at all -- merely pledges to avoid emitting CO2 in the future.”
Reuters: Analysis-Shrink to fit: the year Big Oil starts to become Small Oil
Ron Bousso and Sabrina Valle, 1/10/22
“Europe’s Big Oil companies are planning to spend their windfall from high energy prices on becoming Small Oil,” Reuters reports. “Surging oil and gas prices in 2021 delivered billions of dollars in profits to top oil companies, in stark contrast to the previous year when energy prices collapsed as the coronavirus pandemic hit travel and economic activity. Typically, companies would invest the lion’s share of that cash in long-term projects to boost oil and gas production and reserves after the previous year’s deep cuts. But unlike any other time in their history, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, TotalEnergies, Equinor and Italy’s Eni are focusing on returning as much cash as possible to shareholders to keep them sweet as they begin a risky shift towards low-carbon and renewable energy. “All of the large oil companies are managing decline to a degree,” by shifting to fields that provide larger investment returns for shareholders and leaving more mature assets behind, Ben Cook, portfolio manager with BP Capital Fund Advisors, told Reuters. “The growing pressure from investors, activists and governments to tackle climate change means that European oil giants are turning off the taps on spending on oil even as the outlook for prices and demand remains robust. The two-pronged strategy of reducing oil output and boosting shareholder returns was underscored when Shell sold its Permian shale oil business in the United States for $9.5 billion in September, promising to return $7 billion to investors.”
CLIMATE FINANCE
Financial Times: Banks risk becoming new fossil fuel villains in 2022
By PILITA CLARK, 1/7/22
“As businesses were gearing up for the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow last year, one of Europe’s larger banks released an update on how it planned to do its bit to combat global warming,” the Financial Times reports. “Switzerland’s UBS group said it had become a founding member of the new Net Zero Banking Alliance, a UN-convened club of mostly western banks committed to decarbonising their portfolios. “We’ll publish a comprehensive climate action plan later this year setting science-based targets, including intermediate milestones,” UBS said. This was in April. But there was no new action plan by the end of the year. The bank says it is now aiming for March. One explanation for the delay is that the climate programme had to fit in with a broader strategic vision for UBS, which its newish chief executive, Ralph Hamers, is due to unveil in February. But the lag also reflects a wider industry dilemma: the vast volume of work that banks are confronting as they grapple with net zero commitments that are set to make 2022 a year when financing fossil fuels grows more visible — and troublesome — than ever before. “It’s a huge task,” Jörg Eigendorf, head of communications and sustainability at Deutsche Bank, told FT. Membership of the Net Zero Banking Alliance requires it to calculate and model the carbon footprint of a loan portfolio worth billions of euros, which it will disclose by the end of 2022. “That will bring much greater transparency and scrutiny from regulators, politicians, investors and the general public,” Eigendorf told FT.
OPINION
Sierra Club: Why Is the Biden White House Refusing to Confront the Oil and Gas Industry?
By Nick Cunningham, 1/10/22
“Last November, the Biden administration announced that it would protect the Greater Chaco Canyon landscape in New Mexico from future oil and gas leasing. The area is culturally significant for Pueblo peoples in the Southwest, and the decision was seen as both a victory for Indigenous nations and a setback for the fossil fuel industry,” Nick Cunningham writes for the Sierra Club. “...The contradictory moves—blocking oil and gas development in one area but greenlighting an expansion in another, even if under judicial duress—exemplify President Biden’s approach to climate change in his first year in office. While he has made some important steps to cut US greenhouse gas emissions, his administration's reluctance to directly confront the oil and gas industry is becoming increasingly apparent, according to environmental and Indigenous groups. “They can't have it both ways. They can't talk about climate and then commit massive amounts of new fossil fuels in the face of a climate crisis,” Taylor McKinnon, senior public lands campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Sierra. “They're plagued by a lack of climate ambition at the highest levels of the administration.” “...Despite these moves, Biden’s climate record to date has been more piecemeal than transformational. The White House is not yet employing all of the levers available to the executive branch to tackle the climate crisis. So far, the Biden administration appears to be prioritizing the easy actions while avoiding moves that could antagonize political enemies—like the powerful oil and gas industry… "Tackling the climate crisis requires both major investments in clean energy and an immediate halt to the expansion of fossil fuels—not one or the other,” said Athan Manual, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program. “President Biden has made it clear that he understands the need for this all-hands-on-deck effort, but that understanding still needs to be matched with ambition to make it a reality."
Globe and Mail: Canada has committed to halt financing to the oil and gas industry. To understand what that really means, watch for the fine print
MATTHEW MCCLEARN, 1/9/22
“Of all the recipients of Canadian government support in recent years, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) ranks among the strangest. Export Development Canada, a Crown corporation, provided 19 loans to Mexico’s state-owned oil company over 15 years, totalling somewhere between $3-billion and $5.7-billion (EDC only discloses ranges, not precise amounts). The Indian Oil Company received somewhere between $190-million and $425-million. Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company, got at least $1-billion,” Matthew McClearn writes for the Globe and Mail. “State-owned enterprises control most of the world’s oil reserves and are heavily supported by their own governments, so their need for Canada’s money wasn’t obvious. EDC’s objective was to entice these oil giants to make purchases from Canadian suppliers. Providing that kind of support just got a whole lot more complicated. At last year’s UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, Canada joined 23 other countries in committing to end certain types of support for foreign oil and gas activity by the end of 2022. During a news conference, Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson said Canada would also end public financing of “domestic” fossil fuel projects, reiterating an election campaign pledge made by the Liberal Party. Ottawa pledges to end financing for foreign fossil-fuel projects in 2022. A global movement to permanently separate the oil and gas industry from the public purse appears to be gathering steam, with an overarching objective of repurposing funds to promote renewable energy. A phalanx of supportive prominent organizations include the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).”