OPEC Secretary General says COP29 oil is a gift from God

• Al Ghais says governments can pursue targets without shying away from oil.
• “The Paris Agreement focused on reducing emissions, not on energy source selection.”
• Scientists say the world is likely to exceed the 1.5°C limit in the early 2030s.

BAKU: OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais told the COP29 climate summit in Baku on Wednesday that crude oil and natural gas are a gift from God and that global warming talks should focus on reducing of emissions and not in the choice of energy sources.

The comments came as world governments seeking to limit the damage from global warming gathered in the Caspian Sea nation of Azerbaijan to hammer out a sweeping economic deal aimed at helping countries cut emissions and adapt to changing climate.

“It is indeed a gift from God,” Al Ghais, a veteran Kuwaiti oil executive, said of oil and gas in a speech at the conference.

“They affect the way we produce and package and transport food and the way we conduct medical research, manufacture and distribute medical supplies. I could go on forever,” he added.

His words echoed those of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who used his opening speech at the summit last week to hit back at Western critics of his country’s oil and gas industry, and who also described those resources as a gift from God.

Al Ghais said world governments, which agreed to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels at a 2015 summit in Paris, could pursue their climate goals without shunning oil .

“The focus of the Paris Agreement is on reducing emissions, not on the choice of energy sources,” he said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has said that technologies such as carbon capture can address the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels.

The Secretary General of the Forum of Gas Exporting Countries, Mohamed Hamel, a group of gas exporting countries, also spoke at the conference on Wednesday to support fossil fuels.

“As the world’s population grows, the economy expands and people’s living conditions improve, the world will need more natural gas, not less,” he said.

He added that he hoped a COP29 agreement on international climate finance would allow support for natural gas projects to help countries move away from dirtier fuels such as coal.

“The outcome of COP 29 should facilitate the financing of natural gas projects and the scaling up of cleaner technologies such as carbon capture, use and storage,” he said.

“This is vital to ensure fair and orderly energy transitions that leave no one behind,” he added.

Climate scientists say the world is now likely to pass the 1.5°C threshold – beyond which catastrophic climate impacts could occur – by the early 2030s, if not before.

The world is currently on track for a temperature increase of up to 3.1°C by the end of this century, according to the UN’s 2024 emissions gap report.