European insurers biggest supporters of tar sands pipeline

Written by Adam Cadle

12/05/2020

European insurers Lloyd’s, Zurich and Munich Re are the biggest supporters of Canada’s Trans Mountain pipeline, it has emerged, with the former underwriting $460m in total.

Insurers in the Lloyd’s market are also solely responsible for $50m of cover and have underwritten the rest jointly with other insurers, according to Unfriend Coal. Zurich is responsible for $8m of cover but since last year has doubled the cover it provides jointly with other insurers to $300m. Munich Re’s Canadian subsidiary Temple Insurance provides $250m of cover with other insurers.

Trans Mountain is pressing ahead with plans to expand its pipeline connecting tar sands in Alberta to the Pacific coast outside Vancouver, adding an extra 590,000 barrels a day of capacity – the equivalent of putting 2.2 million cars on the road. It would increase daily flow to nearly one million barrels. Canadian tar sands are one of the highest-carbon sources of oil on the planet.

Elana Sulakshana, energy finance campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, said: “If insurers are serious about avoiding catastrophic climate change, they must align all business with a 1.5ºC pathway. Any company that claims to care about the climate and human rights cannot insure Trans Mountain while it presses ahead with plans to enable a huge expansion of some of the world’s dirtiest oil and ignores the opposition of First Nations whose traditional lands the pipeline crosses.”

Munich Re declined to comment and at the time of publishing the other insurers had not yet responded.

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