A total of Twenty-nine international banks and export credit agencies have ruled out financing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Papua New Guinea, citing climate, environmental and human rights concerns. The project is led by French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies, which says the project will go on as planned, nonetheless.
Twelve financial institutions recently declined the project, including ING, KfW IPEX-Bank and Standard Bank have publicly ruled out financing the project along with major banks such as Crédit Agricole and BNP Paribas.
In December 2025, six international NGOs filed a formal complaint about the project with the Equator Principles Association (EPA), a voluntary risk management framework used by financial institutions to assess environmental and social risks of potential infrastructure projects. The complaint raised concerns that the project failed to meet EPA standards.
The proposed project is located in Papua New Guinea’s Gulf and Central provinces and has a potential export capacity of 5.6 million metric tons of liquified natural gas per year. The plan includes up to 11 wells, a processing plant and 320 kilometers (200 miles) of onshore and offshore pipeline. The project is expected to emit 220 million metric tons of CO2 annually — nearly the emissions of Spain.
Conservationists are concerned that the infrastructure and potential pollution could devastate rare, local wildlife. The would-be project is located in a mountainous region, home to roughly 100 species that haven’t yet been studied by science, Antoine Bouhey from the France-based research and campaigning organization Reclaim Finance told Mongabay in a phone interview. He said the project would “affect a species that is one of the most at risk of disappearing according to the IUCN red list, which is a Bulmer’s fruit bat [Aproteles bulmerae].”
Bouhey said the companies have failed to meet international standards in their environmental impact assessments for the project. He also raised concerns that the process of free, prior and informed consent for local communities was flawed. According to a 2019 company-commissioned human rights impact assessment, the project would affect 39 villages and 12,700 people, the majority of whom are Indigenous.
Bouhey expressed concerns that the planned on-shore pipeline would pass through the Purari River, potentially impacting communities in the area, while the offshore pipeline could disturb the seabed and marine life.
In a press release published in January, TotalEnergies said the company adheres to all international commitments, including the Equator Principles and the International Finance Corporation’s performance standards.
TotalEnergies told Mongabay via email that the project in Papua New Guinea “is progressing as scheduled,” adding that financing for the project is not dependent on the institutions that have ruled it out.
TotalEnergies and its partners are “working closely with the authorities, local communities, and the local economic fabric to ensure that the Papua LNG project is exemplary from both a social and environmental standpoint,” the company said.
Banner image: Canoe on the Purari River in 2011. Image by Hitchster via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
This story first appeared on Mongabay
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
