Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. said it isn’t financing an oil pipeline in East Africa, joining a growing list of financial firms distancing themselves from the project.
“We are not currently involved,” the Japanese bank’s Chief Sustainability Officer Masayuki Takanashi, said at a media briefing Tuesday. Takanashi was responding to a question about the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project, which is planned to carry oil 900 miles from the fields of western Uganda to the coast of Tanzania.
He declined to say if the bank had participated in the project in earlier stages. Environmental group 350.org in February said the bank was a financial advisor which at the time had not withdrawn from the project.
Read more: StanChart Says ‘No’ to Financing $5 Billion Ugandan Oil Pipeline
The pipeline, which is budgeted at $5 billion according to analysts at Barclays Plc, has emerged as a test of the finance industry’s appetite for backing fossil-fuel projects. Protesters have targeted individual firms, successfully persuading several European insurers to steer clear of the pipeline. Standard Chartered Plc last month also said it isn’t involved in the financing.
