Big banks arguably have more power to undermine the oil and gas industry than any other actor, and in recent years they have done their best to halt new exploration. In 2019, Goldman Sachs became the first big U.S. bank to rule out financing new oil exploration, 14 international banks have since ended direct financing of new coal plants. With oil prices soaring once again, it seems certain banks such as Wells Fargo can no longer resist the call to work with oil and gas companies. It’s an open secret within energy circles that the eventual death of oil and thermal coal won’t come from environmentalists or even directly from renewable energy, but rather when big banks decide to stop financing it, rendering it ‘unbankable’. And the U.S. oil and gas sector came dangerously close to meeting that fate after Wall Street banks started disavowing oil and gas lending […]