An ESG Loophole Helps Drive Billions into Gulf Fossil Fuel Giants

Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, has become an unlikely beneficiary of funds earmarked for sustainable investments thanks to a complex web of financial structures it used to raise money from its pipelines. Aramco doesn’t appear to have set out to tap cash originally intended for environmental, social and good governance goals when it started a process to raise $28 billion in 2021. But the fact that ESG investors ended up playing a role in the capital raise of a fossil-fuel behemoth raises questions about a playbook that’s increasingly being used in the Gulf …