Lloyd’s syndicate rules out coverage for the Trans Mountain Pipeline

Project: Tar sands pipeline extension (1,150km)

Purpose: Boosting oil sands transportation from 300,000 boe/d to around 900,000 boe/d between Edmonton (Alberta) and Burnaby (British Columbia).

Environmental impacts:
More than 80 oil spills were reported within the period 1961 to 2016.

Social impacts: Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of Indigenous communities has not been secured.

Controversy level: Very high due to civil society’s opposition.

Lloyd’s of London’s involvement: Lloyd’s underwriters have been involved for years in this project at least from 2014 to 2020. Since the insurance contract renewal of August 2020, Trans Mountain has been allowed to hide its insurers by the Canada Energy Regulator (CER)

Project: UK’s biggest undeveloped oil and gas field with a total of nearly 500 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe).

Purpose: Allowing the extraction of the 500m barrels of oil and gas, over 1 km deep off the Shetland coast in the North Atlantic – majority of Rosebank’s oil will be put in tankers and exported for refining overseas.

Environmental impacts:

• Over 200 million tonnes of CO2 – the climate pollution from Rosebank’s reserves would be more than the combined annual CO2 emissions of all 28 low-income countries in the world, including Uganda, Ethiopia and Mozambique.
• Potential threat to protected species including the whale dolphin and seabirds, as well as having a possible impact on commercial significant species of fish, such as haddock.
• An oil spill from Rosebank’s operations could be devastating for marine ecosystems in the waters of the UK and neighbouring countries.

Social impacts: The UK public would carry almost all the costs (91%) of developing Rosebank. Due to the UK government’s oil and gas subsidies, the UK public would hand over £3.75 billion in tax breaks to Equinor just to develop the field. Overall, the public purse could lose more than £100 million on its ‘investment’ if Rosebank goes ahead, while Equinor and its partners take the profit.

Controversy level: Very high due to local and international opposition.

Lloyd’s of London’s involvement: Lloyd’s and many Lloyd’s managing agents are named as insurers of numerous oil companies operating in the North Sea. Lloyd’s has refused to comment on its involvement nor on specific projects, such as Rosebank.

Discover more from the StopCambo campaign or read this factsheet.

Project: One of the world’s biggest gas projects gathering extra large infrastructure, such as the world’s largest semi-submersible production platform and the longest subsea pipeline of the southern hemisphere (890km).

Purpose: Exporting around 9 mtpa of LNG (roughly 10% of Australia’s annual LNG exports).

Environmental impacts:

• Crosses a protected marine national park.
• One of the most carbon-intensive LNG projects in Australia due to high levels of gas flaring.

Social impacts: Not yet documented.

Controversy level: High due to local opposition to new or expanded gas projects in Australia (Barossa gas field, Scarborough gas field, etc.).

Lloyd’s of London’s involvement: Five managing agents of Lloyd’s were involved in the project insurance policy of the onshore Ichthys LNG plant between 2012 and 2017. Navigators Underwriting Agency Limited and AmTrust Syndicates in addition to three managing agents, assessed in the report.

Read Reclaim Finance’s report on Ichthys.

Project: Heated crude oil pipeline (1,440km, the world’s longest heated pipeline.)

Purpose: Allowing more than 200,000 boe/d to flow from the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields neighbouring Lake Albert in Uganda to the Indian Ocean in Tanzania.

Environmental impacts:

• The pipeline will pass next to the Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, that more than 40 million people depend on for water and food production.
• It will cross more than 200 rivers and run through thousands of farms.

Social impacts: In total, this project will require the displacement of roughly 118,000 people
along the pipeline’s route, primarily farming communities who live off their land.

Controversy level: Very high due to local and international opposition.

Lloyd’s of London’s involvement: Leading (re)insurers, including Munich Re, Allianz and Hannover Re have ruled out insuring the EACOP due to the serious environmental, social and governance impacts, many of which are inherent to the project. However Lloyd’s has so far refused to comment.

Find out more from the StopEACOP campaign.

Project: One of the largest coal mines in Australia, which could produce 60 mtpa (million tons per annum) of coal at peak production.

Purpose: Extracting 2.3 billion tons of coal for export to Asia (mainly India).

Environmental impacts:

• The Adani Carmichael mine is known as a carbon bomb and could emit up to 2 billion tons of CO2 during its lifespan.
• Adani’s Abbot Point coal port is nestled between ecologically significant wetlands, sacred Juru traditional sites, and the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

Social impacts: Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of Indigenous communities has not been secured.

Controversy level: Very high due to local and international opposition.

Lloyd’s of London’s involvement: The Lloyd’s insurance market has been involved in providing insurance for the Carmichael coal project since 2019. Probitas has been named as insurer of the Carmichael rail line, coal haulage operation