WESTPAC

In August 2022, Westpac loaned $65 million to Santos as part of a $1.8 billion loan. This loan was related to the highly controversial Barossa gas field Santos is currently developing, a project that is disputed by traditional owners of the Tiwi Islands, the waters of which is where the project is located. 

In September 2022, Tiwi Islands traditional owners won a federal court challenge against Santos’ Barossa project. The court ruled that Santos had failed to adequately consult Tiwi Islands traditional owners about the project. Santos challenged the ruling, but its appeal was rejected by the Federal Court in December. Despite the ruling and the Munupi people of the Tiwi Islands declaring “Munupi people don’t want any fossil fuel activities off the coast line of the Tiwi Islands”, Santos remains adamant that first gas will be achieved from Barossa in the first half of 2025. 

Santos’ own lawyers argued in court that traditional owners’ connection to sea and country was more like a personal interest, “in the sense of a past time or a hobby” than a genuine legal interest. That Santos considers traditional owners’ interest in the land to be a “hobby” shows a complete disregard for the rights of Indigenous Australians. 

This loan in particular was mired in controversy due to the appalling fact that it occurred whilst the Barossa gas project was being disputed by Tiwi Islands Traditional Owners. In April 2023, Westpac received a human rights complaint for its involvement in the loan from six people from the Munupi, Malawu and Jikilaruwu clans on the Tiwi Islands, and one from Larrakia country in Darwin, assisted by Equity Generation Lawyers. The complaint demands that NAB withdraw from its current loan to Santos and to not finance the associated Darwin LNG project, which would process Barossa gas. Read all about this loan in our blog post.

The complaint was initially dismissed by Westpac, and in September 2023, Westpac had a hand in arranging even more money for Santos, acting as a co-placement agent for a $1.3 billion bond. This prompted Traditional Owners to travel thousands of kilometres to attend the bank’s 2023 AGM, where they confronted the board over the lack of engagement regarding the complaint. You can watch their passionate addresses here. Immediately after the meeting, Westpac CEO Peter King agreed to visit the Tiwi Islands to hear their concerns firsthand. 

Westpac, as part of a syndicate of 12 banks, loaned Whitehaven $1 billion in 2020. It was exposed to Whitehaven Coal until July 2023. On Friday 21 April 2023, Whitehaven Coal announced it will fast-track mining of its new Vickery thermal coal deposit, with construction taking place as early as June this year. The scheduled open-cut thermal coal mine will begin with a ‘box-cut’, producing 1 million tonnes of thermal coal per annum as early as 2024, which Whitehaven plans to rapidly upscale to produce 10 million tonnes of coal per annum in 2025. It was a clear demonstration of the damage climate-wreckers can do with the financial backing of major banks.

Off the back of an enormous grassroots campaign, on July 17 2023 Whitehaven Coal announced it had failed to renew its $1 billion corporate loan. This loan was first inked in early 2013, meaning this failure to renew marked the end of ten years of financial backing from major Australian banks. Westpac is no longer exposed to Whitehaven Coal, and Whitehaven Coal no longer has the financial backing of any of Australia’s big four banks.

After finally dropping this climate pariah from its books, Westpac brought forward its planned exit from thermal coal (meaning companies that earn >15% of revenue from thermal coal) by five years to 30 September 2025. Westpac’s previous sole commitment was a complete exit from the sector (defined then as companies that earn >5% of revenue from thermal coal) by 2030, which also still stands. 

Westpac dealt another death blow to the thermal coal industry, stating that effective immediately Westpac will not provide any new corporate lending or bond facilitation to thermal coal mining companies (>15% revenue from thermal coal). With Westpac accelerating its transition away from thermal coal, it’s up to ANZ, CommBank and NAB to apply more restrictions to their thermal coal customers, such as Glencore, to ensure they don’t enable the expansion of the coal sector with their customers’ money.

In July 2022, Westpac loaned $126 million to Woodside as part of a $1.76 billion general corporate loan.

Woodside is Australia’s largest producer of gas, and is pursuing massive expansion plans completely out of line with global climate agreements. Woodside’s business plans would see it bring on five new oil and gas projects currently in its pipeline. By 2028, the company is aiming to increase production by 24 per cent, and if it gets its way, their proposed projects would see an estimated 2 billion tonnes of harmful CO2 entering the atmosphere.

In May 2021, the International Energy Agency released the first Net Zero by 2050 Scenario and concluded that no new oil and gas fields could be developed in a world hoping to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Since then, Woodside has sanctioned a giant new gas project, the climate-wrecking Scarborough/Pluto 2 LNG project in November 2021, and followed this up in June 2023 by sanctioning the new Trion oil field in the Gulf of Mexico.

In October 2023, Westpac loaned $101 million  to JERA Global Markets as part of a $2.3 billion loan related to the company’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) business. JERA is actively pursuing significant expansion in the LNG sector, including projects such as Barossa in Australia, Freeport LNG in the US, and approximately five LNG import terminals and LNG to power projects with nameplate capacity of 11.6GW in Bangladesh and Vietnam. 

By sponsoring massive LNG projects JERA is increasing its carbon footprint, locking Asian countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh into fossil fuels rather than having them develop renewable energy.

In April 2023, JERA also signed a 20-year Sales and Purchase Agreement with Venture Global for gas from the proposed giant Calcasieu Pass 2 LNG Terminal in Louisiana, USA. The project will have more than double the processing capacity of Woodside’s monstrous Scarborough/Pluto 2 LNG project.

In November 2023, Westpac loaned $80 million to APA Group, as part of a $1.25 billion loan. While part of this loan will be used to fund APA’s acquisition of Alinta Energy’s existing Pilbara gas assets, it will also be used for ‘general corporate purposes’. The loan will not mature in full until 2033. 

In 2023, APA Group signed preliminary agreements with the leading developers of the Beetaloo Basin, Empire Energy and Tamboran Resources, to construct pipelines that would unlock the carbon bomb Beetaloo Basin. Analysis on the Basin estimates that it would create 1.2 billion tonnes of CO₂-e over its lifetime, more than double Australia’s annual emissions in 2021.

Despite the fact that Westpac has ruled out project finance for gas pipelines that unlock new or expanded gas fields, it has no policy restricting corporate finance to the companies building them. Unlike Westpac’s upstream oil and gas clients, pipeline companies like APA will not even be expected to produce emissions reductions (climate transition) plans in order to continue receiving funding. This is a massive loophole considering the infrastructure APA intends to build will unlock those fields and bring the gas to markets where it will be burned.

Westpac reported fossil fuel exposures include:

Oil and gas extraction and exploration, metallurgical coal mining and metallurgical coal in diversified miners, thermal coal miners, LNG terminals, coal rail, coal ports, gas-fired electricity generation, black and brown coal-fired electricity generation, ‘liquid fuel’ for electricity generation, oil and gas refining, oil and gas distribution and retail.

Westpac updated its exposure reporting in 2020 in the current format, prior to 2020, Westpac reported on oil and gas extraction, coal and gas-fired power generation.