The Biden Administration approved a staggering $500 million for oil development in the Middle East as the United States’s oil supply will face a shortage by the end of 2025.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank, approved a multi-million dollar loan guarantee for oil and gas development in Bahrain on Thursday, making it the fifth major project the bank has backed since President Joe Biden’s commitment at the 2021 UN Climate Conference in Glasgow with the Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP).
The $500 million of financing was five times larger than what lawmakers were expecting. The bank told Bloomberg News that the loan guarantee will “increase the production of oil and the availability of gas to meet the future energy demands” of Bahrain.
This comes after Congress was notified about possibly supporting the expansion of an oil and gas field in the Middle East, equipping the country with more than 400 new oil wells and 30 gas wells.
Earlier this week, six Democrat lawmakers wrote a letter addressed to the Export-Import Bank urging them not to move forward with $100 million of financing, citing “climate change” concerns.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said that the $500 million loan guarantee was a “rogue agency.”
“We urge you to take EXIM's mandate to consider the environmental impacts of projects seriously, and to start by disapproving new funding for oil and gas drilling in Bahrain,” the lawmakers wrote.
In 2021, the U.S. joined more than 30 countries in a pledge to end public financing of fossil fuel projects overseas at the Glasgow conference. However, since then, the U.S. has approved eight fossil fuel projects, totaling more than $2 billion.
Just last year, the Biden Administration announced the most restrictive offshore oil and gas drilling plan in U.S. history. They also canceled seven oil and gas leases in Alaska since the start of the president’s term.