The vulnerability of commodity flows has been thrown into sharp relief by the imposition by China this year of export restrictions on rare earth metals and magnets, as well as by the energy crisis in Europe following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Jovanovic said Ex-Im’s early deals would include a credit insurance guarantee for $4bn of natural gas being delivered to Egypt by New York-based commodities group Hartree Partners, and a $1.25bn loan for the giant copper and gold Reko Diq mine being developed by Barrick Mining in Pakistan.
The bank said it authorised $8.7bn in new transactions in the 12 months to the end of September. This does not include a $4.7bn loan that was reapproved in March to support an LNG project in Mozambique led by France’s TotalEnergies.
Jovanovic said Ex-Im had $100bn left to deploy of the $135bn authorised by Congress.
Ex-Im was being “inundated” with requests for support for LNG projects coming from Europe, Africa and Asia, and a series of multibillion-dollar LNG supply deals would be announced in the coming days, he said.
While some development banks have climate change-related mandates that prevent them from investing in fossil fuels projects, Ex-Im cannot exclude them. Jovanovic said American LNG would be a “stabilising factor in providing energy security to parts of the world that need it most”.
Ex-Im’s increased focus on supporting LNG exports and energy security represents a shift of emphasis for the bank, which had been expanding support for renewable energy under former president Joe Biden. Last year it supported $1.6bn in green energy projects, an increase of 74 per cent compared to 2023.
Nuclear energy will be a focus under the bank’s new leadership. Ex-Im was “actively in discussions” about several nuclear projects in south-east Europe where US companies such as Westinghouse were looking to invest, said Jovanovic. It is also looking to back mining projects for uranium — used to make nuclear fuel — the flows of which have moved increasingly into China and Russia.
The White House has stressed the importance of breaking the dependency on China for metals including copper, which is widely used in infrastructure projects, and rare earths, which go into the defence, energy and technology sectors.
Ex-Im was planning to finance critical minerals projects “in a large way” and was working on deals that were “very near the finish line”, said Jovanovic. Much of what was in the pipeline was “orders of magnitude larger” than the $1.25bn Reko Diq loan, he said.