Elnur Soltanov recorded speaking with fake oil and gas group that asked for deals in exchange for sponsoring talks

Elnur Soltanov recorded speaking with fake oil and gas group that asked for deals in exchange for sponsoring talks

The chief executive of Cop29 has been filmed apparently agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals at the climate summit.

The recording has amplified calls by campaigners who want the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists to be banned from future Cop talks.

The campaign group Global Witness posed undercover as a fake oil and gas group asking for deals to be facilitated in exchange for sponsoring the event.

In the calls, Elnur Soltanov, Azerbaijan’s deputy energy minister and chief executive of Cop29, agreed to this and spoke of a future that includes fossil fuels “perhaps for ever”. Cop officials also introduced the fake investor to a senior executive at the national oil and gas company Socar to discuss investment opportunities.

Soltanov told the fake investment group: “I would be happy to create a contact between your team and their team [Socar] so that they can start discussions.” Shortly after that they received an email from Socar.

The UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), the UN body that oversees Cop, says officials should not use their roles “to seek private gain” and it expects them to act “without self-interest”.

On the recording, Soltanov tells the fake oil and gas group: “There are a lot of joint ventures that could be established. Socar is trading oil and gas all over the world, including in Asia.”

He then described natural gas as a “transitional fuel”, adding: “We will have a certain amount of oil and natural gas being produced, perhaps for ever.” At Cop28 last year, the countries involved agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, and the UN body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that developing new oil and gas fields is incompatible with climate goals signed up to in the Paris agreement.

The Cop29 team also appeared willing to waive climate requirements for the company if it sponsored the event. Cop event sponsors are supposed to commit to cutting their emissions and are expected to sign a “national pledge”, promising to come up with a “credible net zero transition plan” at some point over the next two years.

However, during the negotiations, these requirements were waived and a new clause was added to give the fake investment group “meeting opportunities with key local stakeholders from the energy sector at Cop29”.

There was a similar scandal at the Cop28 talks last year in the UAE when leaked documents revealed the host planned to use climate meetings with other countries to promote deals for its national oil and gas companies. The talks were chaired by Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive of the national oil company Adnoc and the UAE’s climate envoy.

A spokesperson for Global Witness said: “The UNFCCC urgently needs to act to clean up the Cop climate talks, starting by banning the fossil fuel industry from sponsoring them, and kicking their lobbyists out for good.

“We’ve had 29 talks with an ever-growing crowd of polluters and snake-oil salesmen present. Let’s try the next one without.”

The UNFCCC told the BBC, which first reported the story, that “the [UNFCCC] secretariat has the same rigorous standards every year, reflecting the importance of impartiality on the part of all presiding officers. Given the spiralling human and economic costs of the global climate crisis in every country, we are very focused on Cop29 delivering ambitious and concrete outcomes.”

The Guardian has contacted the UNFCCC, Socar and the Cop29 team in Azerbaijan for further comment.

Cop29 opens in Baku on Monday.

Cover photo: Recording of Elnur Soltanov has amplified calls for fossil fuel industry and lobbyists to be banned from future Cop talks. Photograph: Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images