Led by West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore, 16 Republican state financial officers have banded together to fight bank boycotts against the oil and coal industry.
“I’m proud to continue to stand with my colleagues against these attacks on our states’ coal, oil and natural gas industries,” Moore said. “These industries – which are engaged in perfectly legal activities – provide jobs, paychecks and benefits to thousands of hard-working families in our states and we will not stand idly by and allow our peoples’ livelihoods to be destroyed to advance a radical social agenda.”
In a letter to U.S. banking institutions, the financial officers announced that they would “be taking collective action in response to the ongoing and growing economic boycott of traditional energy production industries by U.S. financial institutions.”
The goal of the action would be to “protect our states’ economies, jobs, and energy independence from these unwarranted attacks on our critical industries.”
Fourteen Republican state treasurers signed on, including the treasures of Arizona, Arkansas, and Alabama. The Republican comptroller of Texas and Utah state auditor also signed on to the letter.
The letter specifically called out the Biden administration’s efforts to move toward the end of the coal and oil industries.
“The Biden Administration has resumed these attacks by attempting to ban energy exploration on public lands and reportedly pressuring U.S. banks and financial institutions to limit, encumber, or outright refuse financing for traditional energy production companies,” the financial officers wrote.
They also cited Biden’s plan to stop financing traditional energy projects internationally. The Republicans argued that this move aided “Chinese interests” and led the U.S to be dependent on other countries for energy.
The letter continues, “For the reasons stated above, we will each take concrete steps within our respective authority to select financial institutions that support a free market and are not engaged in harmful fossil fuel industry boycotts for our states’ financial services contracts.”
One step mentioned was that certain states will make sure that banks they are working with will not be boycotting the oil and gas industry.
In a press release announcing the coalition, Moore pinned much of the blame for banking’s aversions to the oil and gas industry on “woke capitalists” and “globalist actors.”
“Woke capitalists and globalist actors have been using the guise of climate change to press for anti-American reforms that reduce our country’s competitiveness against hostile nations like Russia and China,” he said. “As a result, in less than a year our country has gone from energy independence to having a President who is begging OPEC and Russia to pump more oil.”
He noted that attacks on the traditional energy industry were “misguided” and “un-American.”
Moore told National Review that another reason he was forming the coalition was to protect the jobs of West Virginians.
“They sold us on globalization and now the only businesses in our small towns are Wal Marts. Now they want to eliminate one of the only remaining industries that gives West Virginians a good living,” he said.
Biden’s nominee for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, has stated that she wants the oil and gas industries to go bankrupt.
“Here what I’m thinking about is primarily coal industry and oil and gas industry. A lot of the smaller players in that industry are going to probably go bankrupt in short order, at least we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change,” Omarova said in a video clip, publicized by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF).