UN Climate Talks: Explosive Battle Ensues as Oil & Gas Industry Sparks Furious Divisions!

Deep divisions emerged over how to fight global warming at the next climate summit this week, while efforts to green the world’s energy system were contested by oil and gas executives and petrostates.

As world leaders and senior officials gathered in New York ahead of the UN COP28 climate summit in ten weeks’ time, a deep rift has emerged between countries that support the expansion of fossil fuels and those that they insist that stopping all new development is crucial to stabilizing the earth’s temperatures.

“Countries understand that we need to progress,” said Dan Jørgensen, Danish minister for development cooperation and global climate policy, who will chair discussions on what new climate targets could be agreed at COP28 in December.

“The bad news is that, although we agree on this, we are quite far from having a consensus on what this actually means. We need to address the elephant in the room: fossil fuel consumption,” she said.

On the sidelines of this week’s New York event, global climate negotiators tested diplomatic language that could be agreed in Dubai, where COP28 will strive to reach a global agreement.

The main source of friction is the precise nature of “phasing out” fossil fuels and whether that would allow the expansion of carbon capture technologies, also known as abatement. Climate summits in subsequent years failed to reach agreement on this wording.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Kenyan President William Ruto were among 17 leaders who signed a letter last week insisting that “killing technology cannot be used to green light the expansion of fossil fuels ”.

Until the world stops adding carbon to the atmosphere, they said, “the need to continually adapt will never end. Costs will increase more and more. We will count them in human lives.”

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said major polluters should meet the EU’s goal of “phasing out fossil fuels unabated before 2050.”

Under pressure from developing countries seeking financing to transition to green energy systems, US climate envoy John Kerry has railed against new coal developments in Asia, where China and India are ramping up production.

Meanwhile, more than 3,000 kilometers away, oil bosses gathered in the friendlier environs of Calgary, Alberta – the heart of Canada’s oil industry – for an entirely different conversation.

At the World Petroleum Congress, a biannual oil and gas conference, about 500 industry executives, including ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods, warned of the risks of transitioning away from fossil fuels too quickly.

“I see many shortcomings in the current transition approach that can no longer be ignored,” Amin Nasser, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, told his audience, which included large delegations from Canada and ‘Saudi Arabia.

“Premature elimination of conventional energy could jeopardize energy security and affordability priorities,” Nasser said. “As the recent energy crisis – exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine – has shown – the world will falter if these realities are ignored or ignored.”

At the same event, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Energy Minister, sought to undermine the International Energy Agency’s latest forecast that global demand for fossil fuels would peak this decade as the cheaper and cleaner renewable energy will increase rapidly.

Back in New York, leaders of small island nations, including Tuvalu and Palau, sought to convey the need for broader alarm about the existential threat posed by rising sea levels.

“If the world allowed an entire country to disappear because of climate change, there would be no hope for anyone else,” said Kausea Natano, prime minister of Tuvalu.

Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados – who has led efforts by small nations ravaged by climate change to get more financing from the rich world – declared that “enough is enough”.

“[Climate change] it’s not just a challenge for small states, it’s a challenge for most countries globally, including the developed world,” Mottley said. “And maybe that’s a good thing because. . . the sense of urgency has come to the table in a way that hasn’t happened in decades.”

But when world leaders head to COP28 in December with the hope of hammering out a deal to preserve the goal of limiting warming, the fossil fuel industry executives who are expected to attend alongside them will push against production cuts before 2050.

The prominence of industry at the top, along with the negotiating teams of countries that depend on its prosperity, remains a source of acrimony and mistrust.

Activists and a group of more than 130 liberal EU and US lawmakers attacked the summit’s presidency in the United Arab Emirates, led by Sultan al-Jaber, also head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

US climate envoy John Kerry has defended the sector’s inclusion as essential to planning emissions cuts. Calgary executives also argued that instead of turning its back on the oil and gas sector, the world should make the most of its carbon expertise.

But as the debate over the role of carbon capture technologies in fossil fuel development intensifies – and economies like the UK, South Korea and Japan waver on green targets – the industry is taking advantage of the opportunity to make its case own cause.

Al Gore, former US vice president and climate activist, has expressed concern over the fossil fuel industry’s “capture” of the UN’s global climate change negotiations “to a disturbing degree”.

Most of the industry wanted to “block, delay and prevent anything that would reduce the sale and burning of fossil fuels,” Gore told the FT. “It is simply not realistic to believe that they will take the lead in resolving this crisis.”