World Bank: We’ll stop financing oil and gas projects after 2019

The World Bank says it will stop financing upstream oil and gas projects after 2019.

The Bretton Wood institution made this known on Tuesday at a climate summit intended to boost global shift to cleaner energy.

“As a global multilateral development institution, the World Bank Group is continuing to transform its own operations in recognition of a rapidly changing world,” the bank said in a statement.

“The World Bank Group will no longer finance upstream oil and gas, after 2019.”

According to the bank, the exception to this decision will be certain projects in some of the world’s poorest countries.

“In exceptional circumstances, consideration will be given to financing upstream gas in the poorest countries where there is a clear benefit in terms of energy access for the poor and the project fits within the countries’ Paris Agreement commitments.”

According to the statement, this decision will help countries meet their greenhouse gas-curbing pledges, which they had made in support of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming.

World leaders, including President Muhammadu Buhari, are attending the One Planet summit in Paris.

The summit is jointly organised by the United Nations, the World Bank Group, and the French Government in partnership with non-governmental organisations

President Buhari signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change on the sidelines of the 71st Session of the United Nations general assembly in New York on September 22, 2016.