Scotiabank becomes fifth major Canadian bank to refuse to fund oil drilling in Arctic refuge
SYNDICATED 4 months ago Scotiabank is the fifth bank in Canada to publicly refuse to bankroll industrial development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the institution announced in a new policy released Monday. “Scotiabank will not provide direct financing or project-specific financial and advisory services for activities that are directly related to the exploration, development or production of oil and gas within the Arctic Circle, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” the bank said in a statement. Scotiabank joins the rest of Canada’s major financial institutions, including Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Toronto Dominion (TD), Bank of Montreal (BMO) and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), in vowing not finance development in a roughly 1.6 million-acre oil-rich parcel of the refuge known as the coastal plain. The largest national wildlife refuge in the U
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In its final days, the Trump administration plans to sell off drilling rights in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Located in the northeastern portion of the state, its 19,286,722 acres make up the largest national wildlife refuge in the United States.
The sale of said rights would cap a decades-long battle to drill in the area. It’s the first big move on the matter since 2017, when the Republican-led Congress passed a massive tax bill that opened the Arctic Refuge to oil development.
Auctioning off the rights could improve the local economy, especially for Kaktovik, the sole community inside the refuge’s coastal plain. The refuge potentially contains billions of dollars in oil and gas reserves. But it would also disrupt one of the last expanses of untouched land in the United States. Members of the Gwich’in tribe, who are native to the area, and other climate change activists have pushed back on the move.