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. Read all about this loan in our blog post. 

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.

Westpac, as part of a syndicate of 12 banks, loaned Whitehaven $1 billion in 2020. Whitehaven’s current loan facility with these banks is due to end in July 2023, but the company says it is currently in negotiations to refinance and extend this loan. With loan discussions reaching their final stages, Westpac has not ruled out giving Whitehaven more money!

In the last decade Whitehaven has more than doubled its production. At the company’s 2021 AGM, CEO Paul Flynn confirmed Whitehaven could more than double its coal production again by 2030 through these new coal projects. This is in stark contrast with the climate science that says 95% of Australia’s coal reserves must remain unburned, and coal supply must decline 11% every year between 2020 and 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5ºC means.

On Friday 21 April, 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.

This speaks to a giant loophole in Westpac’s policy: it does not have restrictions on providing corporate finance to existing coal mining clients who are developing new coal mines. That’s a massive problem. A report by Global Energy Monitor published in October 2022 found that almost 80% of finance for new coal projects is coming from corporate finance. 

As long as Westpac continues to fail to rule out providing more finance to Whitehaven, it is complicit in their coal expansion.

UPDATE: On July 17 2023 Whitehaven Coal announced it had failed to renew its $1 billion corporate loan from a syndicate of banks including Westpac and NAB which had been in place since February 2020. This loan was first inked in early 2013, meaning this failure to renew marks the end of ten years of financial backing from major 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.

However, Westpac’s current policy settings still remain inadequate and enable it to provide corporate finance to, or arrange bonds for companies developing new coal projects. Westpac must rule out all kinds of finance to companies with plans to expand the coal sector.

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.