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Major Lender to Ohio Businesses Won't Finance Pipeline Projects

Connecteing Pipeline in Carroll County
Tim Rudell
/
WKSU
Connecteing Pipeline in Carroll County

After a decade of urging by environmentalists, many banks now have social responsibility  policies for lending, including US Bank. It just modified its policy to put a prominent industry in northeast Ohio on the restricted list.

The bank amended its policy last month to state it "does not provide project financing for the construction of oil or natural gas pipelines. Relationships with clients in the oil and gas pipeline industries are subject to the Bank's enhanced due diligence."

EEIA President Toby Mack
Credit EEIA
/
EEIA
EEIA President Toby Mack

Toby Mack of the Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance says the change is too inclusive -- and wrong when it goes after all business that do some of their work for pipelines.

“You’re targeting a class of enterprise, and workers -- don’t forget the workers -- that literally build all of the physical plant of our country.”

He says scores of small local contractors will be adversely affected. US Bank issued a one sentence comment restating that it updates its policy regularly. 

Copyright 2021 WKSU. To see more, visit WKSU.

Tim Rudell
Tim Rudell has worked in broadcasting and news since his student days at Kent State in the late 1960s and early 1970s (when he earned extra money as a stringer for UPI). He began full time in radio news in 1972 in his home town of Canton, OH.