The United States is pumping $500 million into Bahrains oil and gas fields, in what analysts call an unusual but clearly geopolitical investment that pits the Biden administrations climate goals against its need to shore up a key ally in a region where war is increasingly straining Washingtons relations.

The Export-Import Bank, the U.S. federal governments official export credit agency, said Thursday in a press release that the financing would fund energy efficiency and solar projects in the Gulf kingdoms existing fields, insisting the funding is not expected to result in a meaningful increase in oil and gas production.

But the project includes drilling 400 new oil wells and 30 new gas wells, increasing its overall emissions of planet-heating pollution to more than 1.4 million metric tons per year, according to the Ex-Im Banks own environmental impact analysis .

The investment, the banks largest in overseas oil and gas in years, fails all three litmus tests that climate campaigners say might typically help justify financing foreign production with taxpayer dollars when the U.S. is in the federal Energy Information Administrations own words this week pumping more crude than any other country, ever and smashing records in gas drilling.

Maybe its a really small transaction, or maybe its a least-developed country or maybe its downstream and will help provide more energy access those are the three main excuses we see for why countries approve an oil and gas investment like this, said Nina Pui, an expert on export financing at the green group Oil Change International. None of these apply in Bahrain.

Bahrains crude output is small compared to the U.S. or neighboring Saudi Arabia, with which it shares one of its main offshore oil fields. But drilling made the Persian Gulf monarchy, an island of 303 square miles, one of the worlds richest nations with a per-capita income higher than Spains, and roughly twice that of major U.S. territories like the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa, according to World Bank data .

Two advisers on President Joe Bidens 18-member climate task force reportedly quit last month in protest of the administrations support for the Bahrain deal.

Were shocked the administration didnt change course, Pui said.