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Dutch bank ING vowed in 2024 to stop financing oil and gas companies that develop new fields. But the lender seems to have broken its own promise by providing $908 million in financing to three firms developing new projects in the North Sea. A climate activist said this exposes how ING’s green commitments are tougher on paper than in practice.

Collection:<br>The North Sea Investigations

Authors:

Jan Daalder, Remy Käller

Image:<br>&copy; Rosa Snijders

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It was a bold statement from a bank with billions of euros tied up in the fossil fuel industry.<br>In September 2024, Dutch lender ING announced it would drop clients that were not doing enough to reduce their climate impact and transition to net zero. The bank also said it would stop financing oil and gas companies that focused solely on developing new fields.<br>The commitment came after criticism from climate campaigners – including a protest by Extinction Rebellion against ING at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum – with NGOs accusing the lender itself of lagging behind in the global fight against climate change.

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ING CEO Steven van Rijswijk framed the approach as both a response to the climate crisis and a matter of financial prudence – pointing to the risk of assets being stranded. He told the Financial Times that he wanted the bank to be “as open and honest as we can be” on the issue.

© Rosa Snijders

However, ING appears to have breached its own promise on several occasions, according to new data from the Dutch research group SOMO and Watchtower, a banking tracker from the NGO Bank.Green. The information was shared exclusively with Follow the Money.<br>ING has since financed three oil and gas companies – Norway’s Vår Energi and Aker BP, and UK-based NEO Energy – that are still drilling or intending to develop new oil fields in the North Sea. The overall financing is worth about $908 million.<br>An environmental activist in the Netherlands told FTM that the three deals highlight the limits of ING’s broader commitment to curb fossil fuel financing.<br>‘Just for show’<br>Nicky van Dijk, lead researcher at Dutch environmental group Milieudefensie, argued that the bank’s promise to restrict oil and gas lending is far narrower than it actually appears to begin with.<br>Milieudefensie is suing ING, demanding that it halve its total greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and stop financing all companies that are still launching new oil and gas projects.<br>ING has made two commitments on climate action, according to Van Dijk.<br>“One investment might be a slip-up, but three?”

On the one hand, the bank says it will no longer finance new oil and gas projects through loans earmarked for specific developments, such as drilling platforms.<br>But that commitment “was just for show anyway”, Van Dijk said.<br>“Project finance accounts for only a few per cent of all funding to fossil fuel companies. Much more is channelled through general loans and bonds. And ING is still providing plenty of those to fossil fuel companies,” she added.<br>For example, ING and ABN AMRO helped finance Aker BP’s involvement in large-scale oil and gas extraction in the Arctic by underwriting the company’s bonds, as FTM reported in 2023.

The North Sea Investigations

Who are the winners and losers of the battle for the North Sea? Directed by Follow the Money, this is the first international investigative project into the North Sea as a whole. W...

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ING has excluded project financing for oil and gas extraction in the Arctic from its financing portfolio since 2022.<br>But because the bank did not finance Aker BP’s project directly, but indirectly by underwriting bonds, it did not technically violate its own policy [see box].<br>The lender’s other commitment – made in December 2023 – was to phase out all pure-play upstream oil & gas financing by 2040. This covers companies focused solely on the exploration and extraction of oil and gas, rather than those with downstream activities such as refining, processing, or selling fuels to consumers.<br>Yet that distinction is misleading too, in the view of Van Dijk. Most oil and gas fields are operated by larger players such as Shell and Exxon, which also have downstream businesses.<br>“By excluding pure-play upstream companies, they have effectively closed off just one small backwater,” she added. “And now it turns out that they are not even sticking to that.”

ING cuts loans, but not bonds

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