The Financial Post reports in its Friday edition that Canadian banks' exposure to oil-and-gas loans has surged to a record as energy firms tapped credit lines to combat plunging oil prices. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that energy loans at the country's six largest lenders jumped 23 per cent to $71.6-billion in their fiscal second quarter from the prior period, disclosures show. TD Bank had the largest increase at 29 per cent, while Bank of Nova Scotia remained the biggest lender with $21.6-billion in loans. The banks' rising exposure comes amid an 11-fold increase in impaired energy loans, topping $2-billion. Energy firms have been hard hit this year as global oil prices plummeted, with some grades even briefly turning negative in April as measures to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic hammered worldwide demand. "We're clearly seeing the impact of price wars and supply-demand considerations, storage considerations beginning to play havoc on some producers," Toronto-Dominion chief financial officer Riaz Ahmed said in a recent interview. "In the last few weeks we're watching prices recover with some degree of hope that things will continue to get better here."