Leaked documents have shown that the host of the UN Cop28 summit, the United Arab Emirates, planned to use climate meetings with other countries to promote deals for its national oil and gas companies.
Cop28 begins on Thursday and will be run by Sultan Al Jaber, who is the chief executive of the national oil company Adnoc as well as the UAE’s climate envoy. This dual role has been criticised as a conflict of interest, and climate summit veterans said the new revelations undermined trust in Al Jaber’s presidency of Cop28, potentially threatening a successful outcome.
Recall that Adnoc had the largest net zero-busting expansion plans of any company in the world and that state-run oil and gas fields in the UAE had been flaring gas almost daily despite having committed 20 years ago to a policy of zero routine flaring. Adnoc questioned the figures behind the report but did not provide its own figures.
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Obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR), the leaked documents are briefing documents prepared by the Cop28 team before bilateral meetings between Al Jaber and 27 governments as part of the diplomatic preparations for the climate summit. In addition to setting out issues relating to the climate negotiations, the briefings include “talking points” and “asks” from Adnoc and from Masdar, the UAE renewable energy company, which Al Jaber chairs.
The briefings, first reported by the BBC, include talking points for 15 countries which state that Adnoc wants to work with those nations to extract their oil and gas resources.
For China, Adnoc said that it is “willing to jointly evaluate international LNG [liquefied natural gas] opportunities” in Mozambique, Canada and Australia, while the briefing proposes telling Colombia that Adnoc “stands ready” to help develop its oil and gas reserves.
Recall that climate scientists have repeatedly warned that the world already has plans to exploit far more fossil fuel reserves than can safely be burned and that no new fossil fuel projects should go ahead.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
