BAKU, Azerbaijan: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev used a keynote speech at the COP29 climate summit to lash out at Western critics of his country’s oil and gas industry, saying it had been the victim of a “well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail”.
The comments came on the second day of a summit at which nearly 200 nations are meeting to discuss how they can cut fossil fuel emissions, and moments before United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said doubling down on fossil fuels was an absurd strategy.
The airing of these opposing views on the main stage underscore the challenge at the heart of the climate negotiations: many Western states remain dependent on fossil fuels while at the same time seeking to pressure others who produce them into shifting to greener energy sources.
At the same time, a Dutch appeal court issued a landmark climate ruling in favour of oil and gas company Shell, dismissing an order for it to sharply reduce emissions.
Azerbaijan’s oil and gas revenues accounted for 35 per cent of its economy in 2023, down from 50 per cent two years earlier. The government says these revenues will decline to 22 per cent by 2028.
“As a president of COP29 of course, we will be a strong advocate for green transition, and we are doing it. But at the same time, we must be realistic,” said Aliyev, who has labelled his country’s oil and gas resources a “gift from god”.
“Countries should not be blamed for having them, and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market, because the market needs them. The people need them.”
He singled out the United States, the world’s largest historic carbon emitter, and the European Union for particular criticism.
“Unfortunately, double standards, a habit to lecture other countries, and political hypocrisy became kind of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and fake news media in some Western countries,” he said.
The US is the world’s largest oil and gas producer. European countries, meanwhile, have some of the world’s strictest targets to cut emissions by 2030 – but, at the same time have raced to secure new gas supplies following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
US national climate advisor Ali Zaidi brushed off President Aliyev’s remarks, saying if every country decarbonised at the pace of the US, the world would meet its climate targets. The EU declined to comment.
