Citi, JP Morgan, Blackrock, Goldman, HSBC - $6 Billion In Amazon Headwaters Oil Investments 2015-17
Five of the biggest financial institutions in the world invested a combined $6 billion in oil extraction projects in the western Amazon between 2017 and 2019, according to a study recently published by the NGO Amazon Watch. Leading the race to underwrite this resource rush are some of the most powerful banks and investment funds in the world: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and BlackRock financed oil companies including GeoPark, Amerisur, Frontera and Andes Petroleum.
Investments, in billions of dollars, by financial institutions in oil exploration in the Amazon. Image and data from Amazon Watch.
The projects are spread across 30 million hectares (74 million acres) of the Amazon, accounting for 25% of the rainforest distributed between Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The area is known as the Sacred Headwaters of the Amazon: it is here where the Amazon River, the largest on Earth by discharge volume, is born. But oil projects abound here, in a region considered the most biodiverse section of the Amazon and the world, and that’s home to around 500,000 indigenous people.
The region’s oil reserves are estimated at 5 billion barrels. Keeping this fossil fuel in the ground would prevent the emission of 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. That would be in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, which Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have all ratified. To achieve the agreement’s long-term ambition of capping global warming at 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit), the rate of greenhouse gas emissions would have to be five times lower than current levels, according to the U.N.’s most recent report.
EDIT
n late 2019, President Donald Trump confirmed to the United Nations that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. Though many of these financial institutions have since publicly expressed commitments to socio-environmental corporate responsibility and climate initiatives like the Paris Agreement, they continue to finance the destruction of the Amazon and the violation of indigenous territorial rights, the report from Amazon Watch shows. Many of them are heavily invested in fossil fuels. BlackRock, for example, considered the world’s largest global fund, with $7.4 trillion under management, is also the world’s biggest investor in commodities as oil, gas and coal. JPMorgan Chase, meanwhile, has since 2016 invested more than $196 billion in fossil fuel companies.
EDIT
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/report-names-the-banks-financing-destructive-oil-projects-in-the-amazon/
