A loan in which the lender has no recourse (no means) to get reimbursed by the partners / entrepreneurs who borrowed the money if the project fails, except through foreclosure of the assets used as collateral for the loan. Namely, it is a loan for which the lender cannot claim more than the collateral as repayment in the event that the repayments on the loan are stopped. Lenders (e.g. banks) will therefore examine every facet of an infrastructure project before agreeing to provide the loan and are usually much less willing than the entrepreneur to take a risk. If the infrastructure project is a pipeline project and there is the risk that insufficient quantities of gas will flow through the pipeline to provide a high enough tariff as ROI, the lenders will be weary of agreeing to project finance the project as the pipeline will have very little value once it has been buried in the ground.