RBS denies tar sands link, while opening tar sands office in Alberta

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) last week attempted to deny links to Canada's tar sands, the day after it announced it was opening an office in Calgarry, Alberta, to 'take advantage of the city's booming oil and gas industry'.

Image © Jiri Rezac / WWF-UK

On Thusday 4 March, Kevin Watkins wrote a piece in The Guardian highlighting People & Planet’s Ditch Dirty Development campaign to stop RBS using public money to finance fossil fuel extraction. In particular, he focussed on the fact that, since the bail-out, RBS has underwritten corporate debt and equity worth nearly $2.5 billion with tar sands-related companies.

RBS soon responded through their head of Corporate Social Responsibility, Andrew Cave. He wrote a Response piece also printed in The Guardian. In it, he said that:

“RBS…has not provided any finance directly to tar sands projects in the last three years”.

Unfortunately for Mr Cave, RBS’s Canadian branch had made headlines the previous day… announcing plans to open a new office in Calgary, Alberta, “to take advantage of the economic recovery in the city’s oil and gas sector.” (ie tar sands). It appears that while Mr Cave was writing his piece denying links to Canada’s filthy oil, “RBS Canada executive Larry Maloney said the move is a vote of confidence in the Canadian oilpatch”. So, we swiftly responded with a letter in today’s Guardian.

Louise Hazan, climate campaigner at People & Planet, said:

“People & Planet has grown accustomed to companies telling us they aren’t doing anything bad and thinking we won’t notice that they are saying the opposite to other big businesses. But they don’t normally do both on the same day! Of course, it is irrelevant whether or not RBS ‘directly’ finances tar sands projects - without the financing provided by UK banks like RBS (which is 84% publicly-owned) companies like ConocoPhillips and Shell would not be exploiting the tar sands.

“Fortunately, people can see straight through Andrew Cave’s weasel words. Tar sands extraction is one of the most destructive projects on earth. It is causing runaway climate change and trampling over the rights of First Nation Canadians. RBS is the biggest UK financier of tar sands and the fact that it has used £2.5bn of taxpayers money to fund it is outrageous. We are calling on the UK Government to stop this dreadful misuse of public money”.

A report published by PLATFORM, People & Planet and others last week highlighted the huge role RBS plays in financing tar sands. Read the report