COP29 Leader Caught on Tape Pushing Oil and Gas Deals

“We need the UN to ban petro interests from sitting at the table,” says Lela Stanley, an investigator at Global Witness.

By Amy Goodman , DemocracyNow

November 13, 2024

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The U.N. climate summit known as COP29 is underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, where negotiators are trying to make progress on reducing emissions and preventing the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Many activists, however, have criticized the decision to hold the talks in an authoritarian petrostate. The host country is also facing accusations that it is using the climate talks for business, after the head of the talks, Elnur Soltanov, was caught in a secret recording promoting oil and gas deals. That sting was organized by the group Global Witness, which put forward a fake investor. “In exchange for just the promise of sponsorship money, that got us to the heart of the COP29,” says Lela Stanley, an investigator at Global Witness. “We need the U.N. to ban petro interests from sitting at the table, from influencing the COP.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

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We end today’s show talking about the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. It’s entered its third day. On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres issued a dire warning.


SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: The sound you hear is the ticking clock. We are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. And time is not on our side.

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AMY GOODMAN: Many climate activists have criticized the decision to hold the talks in Azerbaijan, an authoritarian petrostate. Azerbaijan is also facing accusations it’s using the climate talks to make future fossil fuel deals.

Well, the group Global Witness has released a secret recording of Elnur Soltanov, the chief executive of the climate talks known as COP29. An undercover investigator with Global Witness posed as a fossil fuel investor and held an online meeting with Soltanov during which he discussed possible fossil fuel deals.


ELNUR SOLTANOV: As I said, we have a lot of pipeline infrastructure. We have a lot of gas fields that are to be developed. We have a lot of green projects that SOCAR is very interested in. There are a lot of joint ventures that could be established, potential joint ventures. Our SOCAR trading is trading oil and gas all over the world, including in Asia. So, to me, these are the possibilities to explore.

AMY GOODMAN: Those were the words of Elnur Soltanov, the chief executive of the U.N. climate talks in Azerbaijan.

We go now to Lela Stanley, interim head of fossil fuel investigations at Global Witness, joining us from Philadelphia.

Lela, thanks for being with us. So, talk about the significance of what he admitted to your group, albeit he thought he was talking to a fossil fuel investor and thought he could make a deal during the U.N. climate summit, that he’s heading.

LELA STANLEY: That’s right. Thanks so much for having me, Amy.

So, let me just set the scene for your listeners. As many folks probably remember, last year the climate conference was hosted by another petrostate, the United Arab Emirates. And we found that over the year that the UAE held the COP28 host position, its state-owned oil company sought out close to $100 billion in new oil and gas and petrochemical deals. And given that Azerbaijan, also a petrostate, most of its revenue coming from oil and gas, is hosting this year’s climate conference, we thought we wanted to see if something similar might be happening this year. So, as you say, we went undercover. We posed as a fake oil and gas investor, and we reached out to the COP29 team behind the climate conference.

And what we found was that in exchange for just a promise of sponsorship money, that got us to the heart of the COP29 team. We spoke with people who introduced us to a chief executive — excuse me, a senior executive at the state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan. That’s SOCAR. And we were introduced, as you say, to Elnur Soltanov, the CEO of COP29, also the deputy energy minister of Azerbaijan and on the board of SOCAR. And in speaking with our investigators, Soltanov said the COP is not about oil and gas, but then he pitched Azerbaijan as a growing gas producer. And he described an energy future in which fossil fuels would feature, in his words, perhaps forever.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to that clip, that same call, Soltanov saying that oil and gas would be produced perhaps forever.


ELNUR SOLTANOV: So, definitely, in couple of years, I think the production levels will start declining, not now, not next year. And even with net zero, we will have a certain amount of oil and natural gas being produced, perhaps forever.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk, Lela, about what this means for the U.N. climate summit? You have countries pulling out, saying these are not worth it. And yet you have thousands of activists who come from the most hardest-hit parts of the planet, saying, “This is our last hope.”

LELA STANLEY: Yeah, a couple of things. So, first, I want people to remember that the U.N. climate conference, the COP process, it is the only game in town when it comes to rallying global efforts to avert climate breakdown. And that’s the point of these conferences. And so, that’s why it’s so shocking to me that the COP executive, Soltanov, would allow the conference itself to be essentially hijacked by oil and gas interests looking to use it as another business opportunity.

At the same time, we can’t lose sight of how essential this process is. I think the recent election results in the U.S. underscore how essential it’s going to be, more than ever, to have a functioning international process to stop climate breakdown. And we can’t afford to give up on COP. What we can do is force fossil lobbyists out of COP. We need the U.N. to ban petro interests from sitting at the table, from influencing the COP. Last year, our analysis showed that there were over 2,400 fossil fuel lobbyists at the climate conference, and that was more than almost any individual county’s delegation, save one, I believe.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you — you just referenced what’s going on in this country, in the United States. Talk about Trump once again saying he’s going to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, and what that means.

LELA STANLEY: Yeah. You know, you can’t talk about the state of climate now and the state of climate diplomacy now without acknowledging America’s role as historically the biggest emitter, as Joe Biden’s role in overseeing a huge expansion of crude oil exports, and now Donald Trump’s commitment to removing us from the Paris Agreement and from international climate diplomacy. It’s a huge blow to the climate movement.

It is also one country. And I think that really underscores how essential having this functioning U.N. climate process is and how important it is for the host country of COP29, for Azerbaijan, to do its job and ensure that the talks this year are moving us forward toward that goal of averting climate breakdown.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, what has been the response of the head of the COP, Soltanov, to your exposé?

LELA STANLEY: So, we made multiple efforts to reach Soltanov again, to try to reach the COP29 team, SOCAR, and they didn’t respond to any of our outreach or requests for comment after the fact

AMY GOODMAN: Lela Stanley, we want to thank you for being with us, interim head of fossil fuel investigations at Global Witness. Democracy Now! will be reporting live from COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, all next week, from November 18th to November 22nd. Tune in to democracynow.org.