from Sunday Herald, 22 August 2010
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has provided nearly £13 billion worth of funding to the world’s dirty oil and gas industries since it was bailed out by the taxpayer two years ago.
The figures, being revealed today by the Sunday Herald, are the first authoritative and detailed account of the bank’s controversial financing of the companies blamed for causing global warming.
Among the 66 companies backed by RBS are well-known names like BP, Shell, ConocoPhilips, Tullow Oil, Trafigura and Cairn Energy. The bank has helped them raise many hundreds of millions of pounds to finance oil exploration, extraction and development around the world.
To environmental groups and the hundreds of climate protestors currently camped on RBS’s lawn near Edinburgh, the revelations prove that the bank is guilty of an unforgivable crime against the planet.
But to the bank, which does not dispute the figures, they just show that someone has to raise the money to extract the fuels on which we all depend before we can work out how to phase them out.
Continue reading "Revealed: the £13 billion that RBS puts into polluting industries" »
