Banks retain oil and gas lending caution

The Ukraine crisis has not yet seen Europe’s financial institutions shift gears on lending to producers of domestic oil and gas

Francesco Dixit Dominus, CFO of North Sea new entrant Viaro Energy, is still waiting for any newfound enthusiasm for supply security to impact on the appetite of Europe’s financiers towards lending to oil and gas producers. “I do not know if, over the course of the next month, banks’ attitudes will change,” he tells Petroleum Economist. “But I do find it funny that the banks love my money when it comes from production revenues. Yet they remain so reluctant to invest in oil and gas companies.” On the finance side, what are the challenges in moving from being a trading company to an upstream company with its own production? Dixit Dominus: Before we entered the upstream, we were a pure trading