Azerbaijan, a major oil and gas producer accused of serious human rights abuses, is “perfectly suited” to host a crucial global climate summit, according to its official.

Before the COP29 Climate talks begin on Monday in the capital Baku, negotiations chairman Mukhtar Babayev told Sky News the country had a lot to bring to the table.

Sandwiched between Russia and Iran, connecting Europe and Asia, Azerbaijan is “strategically located” to bridge differences between regions, he said, as countries come together with very different ambitions, resentments and fears about the talks.

But there is another reason, Mr. Babayev said: its role as a major oil and gas producer.

Baku is the “world’s first oil city”, home to the world’s first industrial oil well dating back to 1847. Relics and tributes to its source of wealth adorn the city, from ancient oil pumps to its three skyscrapers in form of flames.

“As a hydrocarbon producer that is investing heavily in the shift to renewable energy, we are well aware of the needs of the energy transition,” Babayev, who declined an interview, said in a written question-and-answer session. .

But it is also investing heavily in its gas, with the aim of increasing its production by more than 30% over the coming decade.

And COP Director General Elnur Sultanov was secretly filmed apparently using his role to discuss gas deals.

Activists see this as at odds with the climate leadership role it has offered itself by hosting one of the annual UN COP discussions.

Shereen Talaat, founder of regional climate group MENAFem, said expanding gas production risks “undermining their own credibility and putting the future of our planet at risk”.

The other “hypocrisy”

But Azerbaijan is not the first oil producer to host a COP summit. The UK was extracting oil and gas from the North Sea as it hosted COP26 in Glasgow.

And Azerbaijan is more dependent on its oil and gas revenues, which provide 60% of the government’s budget and 90% of its exports.

Glada Lahn, energy specialist at think tank Chatham House, said: “Unlike the UK, Azerbaijan’s high level of dependence on oil and gas rents means it has an incentive to increase its availability of gas for export – particularly when a large neighboring consumer bloc – the EU – requests it.”

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and the EU sought to cut off money to Moscow by abandoning Russian gas, it had to look elsewhere.

In July, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Azerbaijan to double the amount of gas it buys to 20 billion cubic meters (bcm) by 2027.

The EU’s “gas rush” following Russian cuts and sanctions has exposed it to its own accusations of “hypocrisy”, Ms Lahn said.

“And you can understand why. By asking for more gas from countries like Azerbaijan, Egypt and Qatar, it seems to go against what they preach.”

It also appears to have prompted Azerbaijan to import more Russian gas to meet its domestic demand, so it can sell more gas to the EU, Lahn said, adding that “it’s ironic.”

Azerbaijan imported no gas from its Russian ally in 2020 or 2021, but that rose to 0.5 billion cubic meters in 2022 and 0.8 to 1 billion cubic meters in 2023, data shows of S&P Global.

Ilham Aliyev, the country’s autocratic president, said this summer that this was because Russian gas was “very affordable.”

Detentions and repressions

Today, however, Azerbaijan’s gas deal with the EU is fragile, as the bloc seeks to gradually reduce its gas consumption and fossil fuel financing to meet its climate goals.

European politicians now feel uncomfortable working with Azerbaijan’s autocratic government after its fierce crackdown on activists, independent journalists and critics.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented cases of 33 people detained since the start of 2023, most in the last 12 months, since Azerbaijan was confirmed as host of COP29.

“They arrested an unprecedented number of people in a relatively short period of time, and an ever-widening circle of people,” said Rachel Denber of HRW.

Last year, the US State Department also detailed “credible reports” of “significant human rights concerns”, including arbitrary killings, torture, political prisoners and wrongful arrests. of journalists.

One of them was an academic from the London School of Economics, Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu.

He was arrested during a visit to Azerbaijan last year on currency counterfeiting charges “universally considered to be spurious and motivated by his criticism of corruption in the country,” the US State Department said.

Mr Babayev told Sky News: “We strongly reject any allegations that political prisoners are being held in Azerbaijan. We are disappointed that some actors are seeking to fuel a smear campaign and undermine the important work ahead of us.”

Commenting on this denial, Gubad’s son, Ibad Bayramov, said: “He it’s like someone looking at the sky and saying it’s black. When we see that the sky is clearly not black.”

Mr Bayramov, who traveled to London this week to urge British MPs to call for his father’s release, told Sky News: “The Azerbaijani government probably thought they could find a way to hide all their totalitarian policies because COP29 concerns the climate.”

But he added that “more people are now aware of human rights violations in Azerbaijan than ever before.”

In October, the European Parliament said Azerbaijan’s “continued human rights violations” were “incompatible” with its role as host of the COP – a process meant to involve civil society.

Citing this, as well as fears that increased gas imports from Azerbaijan could be “in turn offset by Baku importing Russian gas”, MEPs called on the European Commission to abandon Azerbaijani gas.

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Good cop or bad cop?

The incentives to continue pumping gas and what remains of its oil are strong.

Get away from them, like countries committed last yearwould be “economic suicide,” said Gulmira Rzayeva of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

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But it is also very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, given its water shortage and its dependence on agriculture for a third of its jobs.

Learn more:
Have leaders kept their promise to “move away” from fossil fuels?
Prince William to attend COP30 in Brazil next year

A test of how he wants to balance these two threats will be his new climate action plan, which may or may not be released at COP29. The current one has the lowest possible rating.

The other will be how he handles the next two weeks of negotiations.

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Ruth Townend, who co-wrote a report with Ms Lahn, said leaders could “dig their nails in and try to keep producing oil and gas for as long as possible”.

Or it could try to “chart a new path…to move beyond fossil fuels to address this type of vulnerability and, essentially, secure their future.”