Wells Fargo’s $28 Billion Oil Lenders Are Ready for This Boom

One year after Wells Fargo & Co. became one of the last big U.S. banks to make a net-zero promise, essentially marking its enormous oil and gas loan business for extinction, the bankers who dole out billions of dollars to fossil fuel aren’t panicking.

The specialists in oil and gas have worked through a streak of ­money-burning years capped by a brutal pandemic. Now the hydro­carbon business is roaring back, and Wells Fargo’s lenders sit right at the top. No one in the world put together more fossil fuel loans last year as book­runner, according to data Bloomberg compiled: The bank’s 2021 tally in the sector topped $28 billion; it’s racked up more than $188 billion in oil and gas loans since late 2015, when the landmark Paris Agreement was adopted. That sum is more than the market capitalization of BP, Marathon Petroleum, and Valero Energy—combined.