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Banks and tar sands

Banking on Climate Change 2020 - Tar sands. Photo: Rainforest Action Network (RAN)

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Banking on Climate Change 2020 - Tar sands. Photo: Rainforest Action Network (RAN)

Go directly to: tar sands policy table or tar sands exclusion table

What are tar sands?

Tar sands, also known by the fossil fuel industry as oil sands, are a type of unconventional fossil fuel. Tar sands consist of a mixture of clay, sand, water and a very thick, highly viscous form of oil often referred to as bitumen. Crude bitumen is so thick that it usually cannot be recovered through a well, so other extraction methods are needed. The two most commonly used extraction methods are ‘in-situ’ mining, where steam is used to liquify bitumen deep in the ground, and ‘surface mining’, where the extraction site is excavated. Most of the world’s proven tar sands reserves are in the province of Alberta, Canada.

Surface mining of tar sands involves clearing large sections of boreal forest. The tar sands extraction and refining process also puts a heavy burden on fresh water supplies, consuming about six units of water for each unit of tar sands gasoline produced. The resulting waste water is highly toxic and often ends up stored in dangerous ‘tailings ponds’. Due to these unconventional extraction and refining methods, Canadian tar sands emit about 31% more greenhouse gases over their entire life cycle than average North American crude. The extraction of tar sands, and its transport by pipelines, is also linked to many other environmental and human rights issues such as water pollution, increased rates of cancer, disruption of habitat, air pollution and disruption, and violations of the collective human rights of Indigenous People.

Banks and tar sands

The severity of the climate crisis requires that banks must urgently take steps to disengage from financing all business activities and projects that continue the world's reliance on fossil fuels. Banks must therefore end support for all new tar sand projects and implement a full phase-out for financing tar sands, in line with the Paris climate agreement.

The world’s biggest financiers of tar sands are the Canadian banks TD and RBC. In the five years since the Paris Climate Agreement (2016-2020), these banks poured USD 24 billion and USD 23 billion into tar sands respectively. Other major financiers of tar sands are JPMorgan Chase and Canadian banks CIBC, Bank of Montreal and Scotiabank.

Bank policies on tar sands are assessed below. These assessments follow the methodology of our Banking on Climate Chaos 2021 report, published in March 2021. The details section in the table contains further detail on the exact scoring per bank, as well as an overview of relevant policies.

See here for banks' exposure to the tar sands sector in 2016-2020.

Bank policy scores on tar sands

BankLast update

Country

Score

Ranking

Details

ABN AMRO

2020-03-01

NLD

Laggard

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