A federal agency quietly approved a $5 billion loan on Thursday to fund a liquefied natural gas facility in Mozambique owned by TotalEnergies, a French company that has a history of working with foreign adversaries, including Iran, Russia, and China.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank’s decision to finance TotalEnergies’ LNG project is facing backlash from conservatives wary of foreign aid spending, as well as the U.S. LNG industry, which says the facility will compete with American businesses. Critics note that a long-awaited Alaska LNG pipeline proposal, which President Trump touted in his address to Congress this month, would face direct competition from the TotalEnergies facility.
The company was one of the largest importers of Russian LNG last year, according to the Associated Press. It was also the first Western company to sign an oil deal with the Iranian government during a break in U.S. sanctions in 2016.
Rick Perry, Trump’s former energy secretary, told the Washington Free Beacon that the TotalEnergies Mozambique project “directly competes with the U.S. LNG industry, at a time when the President is looking to expand it.”
“President Trump and his cabinet have been very clear that this administration will restore American energy dominance and protect the U.S. energy industry and the millions of people that support it,” said Perry. “The proposal for ExIm bank to send $5 billion in taxpayer dollars to fund a foreign owned project in Africa contradicts this priority.”
The Ex-Im Bank originally greenlit funding for the Mozambique facility at the end of the first Trump administration, but the proposal was paused due to ISIS-linked terrorist activity in the area. The project remained in limbo during the Biden administration, which was reluctant to fund fossil fuel companies.
In 2019, Ex-Im said the loan would boost the U.S. economy by funding the “export of U.S. goods and services from multiple states for the development and construction” of the Mozambique facility, while supporting “an estimated 16,400 American jobs over the five-year construction period.”
On Thursday, Ex-Im’s board approved the $4.7 billion loan in a closed-door meeting.
Daniel Turner, director of the energy lobbying group Power the Future, slammed the closed-door Ex-Im vote as an example of “weaponized bureaucracy” and said the loan would go toward “building a company that will now directly compete with America.”
“Ex-Im is an organization that is indifferent to the voting will of the American people, the national ethos, and the conversation around savings,” said Turner. “Why does a French company need $5 billion from U.S. tax dollars?”
Opponents are also voicing concerns about TotalEnergies’ involvement with adversarial countries. A former White House official, who served in the first Trump administration, said the Total Mozambique loan raised alarms when it was first proposed in 2019.
“We’re an administration that is ‘America first,’” said the former official. “Basically anywhere the United States says this is an area where we don’t want anybody going and investing, and we’re sanctioning this country … TotalEnergies looks at that and says, ‘Okay, so that’s where we’re going to go invest,’” said the official.
TotalEnergies continues to hold investments in the Russian LNG sector, including a nearly 20 percent stake in Novatek, one of Russia’s largest natural gas producers. The company also inked a cooperation deal last year with the Chinese government-owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (SINOPEC), and has been working to help China produce “sustainable jet fuel,” according to a press release.
After the Obama administration lifted sanctions on Iran, TotalEnergies was the first Western company to strike a major oil deal with the regime. The company pulled out of Iran after the renewal of U.S. sanctions but maintains a small office and staff in Tehran, according to its 2023 financial report.
Total also held investments in Cuba and Venezuela until 2022, according to the financial report. The company is the largest shareholder in Yemen LNG, which operated a gas plant that was allegedly used by Emirati forces as a military prison, according to a 2023 lawsuit.
The Ex-Im loan has already faced some backlash from conservative media, a sign that it could become a flashpoint in the Republican fight to curb government spending and overseas funding. Last month, the Wall Street Journal editorial board called the TotalEnergies proposal a “risky foreign project that competes with American businesses” and denounced Ex-Im as an agency “in need of the DOGE treatment.”
Steve Forbes, the conservative media publisher, told the Free Beacon it was a “risky and nonsensical investment.”
“DOGE’s admirable work is intended to cut unnecessary foreign aid, especially projects which would directly compete with American LNG,” said Forbes.
