BAKU: OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al-Ghais on Wednesday told the COP29 climate summit in Baku that crude oil and natural gas were a gift from God, and that global warming talks should focus on cutting emissions not picking energy sources.
His words echoed those of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, who used his opening address to the summit to hit back at Western critics of his country’s oil and gas industry, and also described those resources as a gift from God.
“They are indeed a gift of God,” Al-Ghais said in a speech at the conference.
“They impact how we produce and package and transport food and how we undertake medical research, manufacture, distribute, medical supplies. I could go on forever.”
He said that world governments, which agreed to limit planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels at the 2015 summit in Paris, could achieve their climate targets without shunning petroleum.
“The focus of the Paris Agreement is reducing emissions, not choosing energy sources,” he said.
OPEC has said that technologies like carbon capture can tackle the climate impact of burning fossil fuels.
Mohamed Hamel, secretary-general of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, a grouping of gas exporter nations, also spoke to the conference on Wednesday in support of fossil fuels.
“As the world’s population grows, the economy expands, and human living conditions improve, the world will need more natural gas, not less,” he said.
He added that he hoped that a COP29 deal on international climate finance would allow support for natural gas projects to help countries transition away from dirtier fuels like coal.
“The outcome of COP 29 should facilitate financing for natural gas projects and scaling up cleaner technologies such as carbon capture, utilization and storage,” he said.
“This is crucial for ensuring just inclusive and orderly energy transitions that leave no one behind.”
Climate scientists say the world is now likely to cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold — beyond which catastrophic climate impacts could occur — in the early 2030s, if not before.
The world is currently on track for as much as 3.1 Celsius of warming by the end of this century, according to the 2024 UN Emissions Gap report.
