While much of the country was occupied last week with holiday travel and time with family, a little-known government agency approved a $90 million guarantee for ING Capital to finance a liquified natural gas export facility in Texas. All told this year, that agency—the U.S. Export-Import Bank—has approved nearly $1 billion in fossil fuel lending, including $100 million for expanding an oil refinery in Indonesia and $400 million of insurance for revolving credit facilities to help commodity trading giant Trafigura purchase LNG.
EXIM, as it’s known, is the official export credit agency of the United States, meant to “advance American competitiveness and assist U.S. businesses as they compete for global sales.” Functionally, that means that EXIM provides loans, guarantees, and insurance products to U.S. exports when the private sector is unwilling or unable to do so. The U.S. is now the world’s biggest LNG exporter, so it stands to reason that an agency charged with supporting the country’s export industries might back gas projects. Yet such deals have kept flowing despite repeated pledges by the Biden administration to end U.S. financing for overseas fossil fuel development.