oil and gas are a “gift from God”, insists the Azerbaijani president, host of the climate summit

“We should not blame countries for having them and supplying them to the markets,” argued Ilham Aliev, on the second day of this COP29 in Azerbaijan, a Caucasian state rich in hydrocarbons.

The host of COP29 will not only make friends. The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev, who is hosting this year's UN climate summit in Baku, said on Tuesday, November 12, that he took responsibility and “repeat” its expression of “gift from God” to designate the hydrocarbons, which have made his country rich. “Any natural resource, oil, gas, wind, solar, gold, silver, copper… These are natural resources and countries should not be blamed for having them and providing them to the markets, because the markets have them need”he pleaded, at the opening of a meeting of world leaders at COP29.

As host country, “we will also be fierce defenders of a green transition”he assured, “but at the same time we must be realistic”. To describe Azerbaijan as“Oil state”, “it is not fair and it demonstrates a lack of culture and political knowledge”he defended, emphasizing that his country represents 0.7% of global oil production and 0.9% of gas production, far behind the United States.

The main challenge of this COP, which will last until November 22, is to set the amount of climate aid from developed states for developing countries. This money should allow them to develop without coal or oil. and can cope with more heatwaves and floods. Today at 116 billion dollars per year, the envelope will have to amount to thousands of billions annually, depending on the poor countries. In his opening speech on Monday, the president of COP29, Mukhtar Babaev, Azerbaijani Minister of Ecology and former executive of the national oil company Socar, spoke of “hundreds of billions”.