Another French insurer has taken a step forward in tackling oil and gas expansion. Covéa has committed to ending insurance coverage for new oil and gas fields, bringing the group in line with its French peers AXA and SCOR. The commitment, which is consistent with Covéa’s ambition to actively contribute to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, includes its reinsurance subsidiary PartnerRe. While this move is necessary, it remains insufficient. Like AXA and SCOR, Covéa continues to support the expansion of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.
In its 2025 annual report, published in May 2026 (1), Covéa announced that it would no longer provide insurance coverage for “any new constructions of oil and gas exploration/extraction fields”. The measure will notably apply to PartnerRe, the reinsurer acquired in 2022 (2), and to MMA, the group’s insurance arm with significant exposure to small and medium-sized businesses.
While MMA’s activities did not expose the group to major fossil fuel companies and their infrastructure, Covéa’s acquisition of PartnerRe — the world’s 12th-largest reinsurer (3) and an active player in specialty lines, including energy risks (4) — means the group now insures such activities.
Covéa becomes the world’s 12th (re)insurer to stop covering new oil and gas fields
Covéa has become the world’s 12th (re)insurer and the third French insurer, after AXA and SCOR, to commit to ending insurance coverage for new oil and gas fields (5). The move comes nearly two years after the last similar commitment in the sector, adopted by Swiss insurer Zurich Insurance.
The commitment is consistent with Covéa’s objective of contributing to net-zero emissions by 2050 (6) and aligns with the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Net Zero by 2050 scenario, first published in 2021. In that scenario, the IEA makes clear that achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 requires no new oil and gas fields approved after 2021 (7).
A commitment weakened by an exception
A review of Covéa’s annual report leaves little room for doubt: MMA and PartnerRe will apply strict restrictions within their respective markets and will no longer insure new oil and gas fields. While no exception is mentioned in Covéa’s annual report, PartnerRe’s 2025 ESG report (8) states that these restrictions may be overridden if the “Division Head” determines that a new oil or gas field is located in an area lacking short-term alternatives.
Yet the notion of “short-term alternatives” is left undefined. Without a clear framework, the provision leaves the door open to numerous exemptions. Unless Covéa provides further clarification, this exception should be removed.
Silence on LNG despite the risks associated with its expansion
Although Covéa has committed to ending support for new upstream oil and gas projects, it can still continue underwriting an industry to which PartnerRe is exposed: LNG. Through an insurance certificate obtained by the U.S.-based NGO Rainforest Action Network (9), Reclaim Finance identified PartnerRe Ireland as one of the insurers of the Calcasieu Pass LNG export terminal in Louisiana.
Committing to stop insuring new oil and gas fields while continuing to support the future expansion of LNG represents a major inconsistency in Covéa’s policy. This contradiction is particularly evident in the United States, where LNG export terminals rely on shale gas extracted through hydraulic fracturing for nearly 80% of their gas supply on average (10). These wells are characterized by very steep production decline rates after only two years of extraction (11). As demand from the rapidly expanding fleet of LNG export terminals continues to grow, oil and gas producers are incentivized to drill ever more gas wells to meet the growing demand.
Globally, the oil and gas industry plans to build more than 60 new LNG export terminals by 2030. These projects carry a potential greenhouse gas footprint of 10 GtCO2e (equivalent to more than three years of greenhouse gas emissions from all 27 European Union member states), including 150 Mt of methane emissions. Given the massive scale of LNG expansion and its incompatibility with a net-zero pathway (12), refusing to insure new LNG export terminals should be a priority.
By adopting this commitment, Covéa is sending a positive signal in the fight against oil and gas expansion and is now on par with French (re)insurers AXA and SCOR. However, the group must clarify the exception attached to its commitment to stop covering new oil and gas fields. For Covéa and its two French peers, the time has now come to end their support for LNG expansion, the glaring blind spot in their oil and gas policies despite its harmful impacts at both local and global levels.
