Good first step

News in Brief

After a year of campaigning by environmentalists, the French government announced at the beginning of December it would not fund a gas megaproject in the Arctic.

It was going to support the French oil company, TotalEnergies, which is involved in ‘Arctic LNG 2’, a massive development in the Russian Arctic due to open in 2023.

It will turn locally-mined gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG) for export. The plan is to produce 20 million tonnes of LNG a year.

So, the French government has finally pulled out of funding Arctic LNG 2 – unlike Italy’s export credit agency or other state lenders.