!["A treason [to the process]."](https://www.thecooldown.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/image-recVl2i0YT7R0nMUP.jpg?w=1920&h=800)
The top official of the world's leading climate action conference landed in hot water when they offered to engage in oil deals with an undercover operative.
CEO Elnur Soltanov discussed potential contracts with a fake investor who said they were representing a Hong Kong energy firm, the BBC reported. Soltanov is the deputy energy minister for Azerbaijan — which hosted the 29th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change over the last two weeks — and a board member of the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).
Azerbaijan, located on the Caspian Sea, is an oil and gas powerhouse, with half its economy and 90% of its exports depending on the industry, according to the BBC.
"There are a lot of joint ventures that could be established," Soltanov said in a secret recording. "SOCAR is trading oil and gas all over the world, including in Asia."
He began by touting the goals of COP29 — last year's conference saw governments agree for the first time to pursue more aggressive climate action by divesting from dirty fuels, with plans due by February — and "green transitioning projects" but then said the country was planning to ramp up gas production and build out infrastructure such as pipelines.
COP is the main enforcement arm of the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which 196 countries said they would work to keep the human-caused rising global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in hopes of limiting the effects of the climate crisis, which include more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and wildfires. To achieve that, polluting gas emissions "must peak before 2025" and "decline 43% by 2030," per the agreement.
Soltanov facilitated email contacts between the fake investors and SOCAR, and a separate agreement was discussed with the COP29 team involving a $600,000 sponsorship payment to a fake company in return for the SOCAR introduction. Soltanov also talked up natural gas as a "transitional fuel" and said, "We will have a certain amount of oil and natural gas being produced, perhaps forever."
The BBC reported the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said oil and gas production will continue after 2050 but that "developing … new oil and gas fields is incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5 C."
"Attempting to do business deals as part of the COP process appears to be a serious breach of the standards of conduct expected of a COP official," the BBC stated.
"These events are supposed to be about reducing the world's use of fossil fuels — the main driver of climate change — not selling more."
Paris Agreement architect and former U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres called Soltanov's actions "a treason" to the process, the BBC reported.
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