Global Construction Review (GCR) reported on March 5 that South Africa’s Standard Bank, which was to have been a financier of the $3.5 billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), is suspending support while it waits for the outcome of an environmental and social impact study. The bank told Uganda’s Daily Monitor that its fossil fuels financing policy set out stringent conditions for lending to fossil fuel projects, which have to “minimizing or reduce” greenhouse gas emissions in order to be funded. But in fact, the decision followed an open letter by 263 NGOs and sent to 25 banks, to demand they not finance EACOP, claiming it will violate the rights of local communities and have an unacceptable environmental impact.
The letter aimed in this case at the three banks that are financial advisers to the project: Standard Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui of Japan, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. But it was also sent to 22 banks that have been involved in financing other projects of the developers of EACOP, which are France’s Total and China National Offshore Oil Corporation. The other banks in the act of suppressing projects include Crédit Agricole, Société Général, JPMorgan Chase, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Standard Chartered, HSBC and Mizuho.
