Richard McIntyre: Federated Farmers Spokesperson on banks beginning to stop lending to small petrol stations

There are concerns that bank's environmental goals will hurt petrol stations.  

Federated Farmers says it's been told by small petrol stations that banks will stop lending to them, and all existing debt will need to be paid by 2030.  

Spokesperson Richard McIntyre says it's because of commitments to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.  

He told Heather du Plessis-Allan it doesn't seem like they're going after the big players. 

Richard McIntyre says they're worried about small communities losing their petrol stations. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, as we discussed on the show yesterday, banks have
been busted refusing to bank various businesses refusing to give
them accounts, including two ladies who run a sex toy retailer.
And now it seems they're also threatening to pull lending
from some petrol station owners because these guys sell fossil fields,
and fossil fields are not cool anymore. Federated Farmers have
blown the whistle on this one in the National Board

(00:21):
member Richard McIntyre's with us. Now, hey, Richard, Hey, Heather,
So what's actually going on here? Have these guys who've
already got lending with their bank, these petrol station owners,
have they been told they have to pay it back
by a certain date?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, that's right. We've had quite a few petrol station
owners as you reach out to us with all the
stuff that we've been doing in the banking space, and yeah,
one of them has actually given us a letter from
Bendat as it was saying that they can have no
further lending from here on in and that they have
to begin repaying all of their debt and it has
to be repaid by twenty thirty. From then they may

(00:56):
have a transactional facility, but no further ending after that.
And we're getting anecdotal evidence that other banks are doing
the same thing as well. Within that leading there's a
reference to the net zero Banking Alliance, which being dead
and the other banks are part of.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Right. And how many gas stations are we talking about
here that you guys have heard from.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
There's about half a dozen that have breached out to
us personally, but we're hearing from from various other sources,
you know, within the I guess the petrol station industry
that you know that there are a lot of a
lot of petrol stations affected by it. And so the
thing to be clear of here, this isn't about the
banks declining to fund oil and gas exploration or something
like that, or even the big petual chemical companies like

(01:42):
Mobile or Caltechs or whatever. You know. These are small
business owners that provide a service to New Zealanders in general,
and obviously our particular interests is real New Zealanders and
you know, so for the banks to actually be declined
to fund them and consider them to be negative while
the rest of it is actually considered them to be
a vital set, this is just ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
So this net zero Banking Alliance suggests that the banks
themselves have set themselves in climate targets and in order
to meet them, they have to stop banking problematic and
I put that in their quotes, but problematic businesses like
gas stations.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, that's correct. So back in I think it was
twenty twenty one in Glasgow, a whole lot of effectively
banks met up and signed this net zero Banking Alliance
and so part of the commitments to that were that
they needed to reduce their financed emissions and so that's
effectively you know, all the money that lends out the
emissions from them, and so this reduction of funding to

(02:40):
petrol stations is keeping within that commitment.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Now, how much is this guy going to have to
pay back to.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Be in z Oh, it's quite a few moment for
the particularly what I'm talking about, So it's not something
that's actually achievable within that time frame in terms of
from revenue. And what it also does is it reduces
the ability for for them to actually sell their business
and time when it's time for them.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
To They're over a barrel, aren't they. They're over a
barrel because you can't pay that level of money back
in the next six years, and then you can't. In
order to pay it back, you'd have to sell. But
in order to sell, somebody else would have to be
able to take a loan, which they also can't get.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Correct and you know, well, you know, well, I don't
like what they're doing in general. You know, one of
the biggest problems is that they're doing it collectively, effectively,
having signed this alliance and then acting it in a
very very similar manner.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, yeah, Now this concerns you, guys, why because your
rural communities rely on these gas stations.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Exactly, you know, yeah, having services like petrol stations, and
obviously there's there's a bigger context here for farmers as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Interesting, Richard, thanks very much, really appreciate it. This is
Richard McIntire, Federated Farmers National Board member. Here's a text hither.
I'm the chair of why tall More. The banks are
absolutely reducing or refusing to fund fuel companies, even though
we've got a hydrogen network, even though we've got electric charges,
even though we won their White Cuttle Sustainable Company Award
last week. Happy to chat, How crazy is that? It's
a crazy situation. But the world has gone crazy, hasn't it.

(04:09):
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