A strong COP needs hosts that lead by example, but a repeated pattern has emerged of host countries compromised by their own oil and gas interests in recent years
With each passing year, the climate emergency's impacts are intensifying at a dangerous rate, necessitating ever more swift and bold action to end the world's addiction to fossil fuels and get us all on the path to safety.
Yet at COP, one of the world's key arenas for global coordination on climate action, we are still hard pressed to find the kind of ambitious action that this moment in history requires.
Since COP28, which secured a historic acknowledgement that we must "transition away from fossil fuels" to halt climate breakdown, we have not seen any mention of fossil fuels enter the climate conference's final texts - let alone a reaffirmation of COP28's statement.
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So, what's going on? Why, after three decades of COP summits, are we still waiting for a solid roadmap to a fossil fuel phaseout?
Part of the reason can be put down to fossil fuel lobbyists' capture of COP, who have swarmed the conference each year to promote their industry's interests.
But that's only part of the picture. Over the past few years, we have also seen COP's principles compromised from the very top, with the summit hosts' proclaimed climate ambitions undermined by their own countries' stakes in oil, gas and coal.
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Murky deals before Abu Dhabi's COP28
The appointment of Sultan Al-Jaber as CEO of COP28 raised more than a few eyebrows at the time, given his dual role as CEO of Abu Dhabi's state-owned oil company, ADNOC.
Only the year before, his name had appeared on the list of 636 fossil fuel lobbyists granted access to the COP27 talks in Egypt in his position with ADNOC.
Graduating from oil and gas executive to heading up a global climate conference is some leap - one we called a "blatant conflict of interest."
We later found that in the same year that Abu Dhabi hosted COP28, ADNOC pursued oil, gas and petrochemical deals that may have been worth as much as $100 billion. This would have been a five-fold increase on the deals it sought the year before in 2022.
One anonymous official who was involved in that year's COP negotiations told Global Witness that Al-Jaber had used his year as COP president-elect to seek new deals for ADNOC - even reportedly using time at the climate summit itself to discuss possible deals with oil and gas executives.
In the end, COP28 did secure a mention of fossil fuels in the final text, but stopped short of committing to a "phaseout" - prompting Sir David King, chair of the UK's Climate Crisis Advisory Group, to pan the agreement's wording as "feeble."
Conflict of interest at Baku's COP29
In 2024, Abu Dhabi passed the torch on to Azerbaijan - another petrostate where ADNOC had only recently agreed to a joint equity stake in its Absheron gas field.
We speculated that this may indicate Azerbaijan was gearing up to repeat ADNOC's playbook by pursuing more international business ties at COP.
In the weeks leading up to the conference, COP29's CEO, Elnur Soltanov, met with our undercover investigator, whom he believed to be an oil and gas investor interested in funding a sizeable sponsorship package for the climate summit.
This investor, we told Soltanov, was also "very interested in investing in the oil and the gas industry in Azerbaijan."
After dangling "green transitioning projects" as a potential avenue, Soltanov offered to make an introduction to the country's state-owned oil and gas company SOCAR.
Though he did state that "COP is not about oil and gas," Soltanov then suggested that our investor "incorporate your activities with SOCAR's activity during COP, so that you can ... talk business to them and also participate in the COP29 process."
When oil and gas interests and climate diplomacy overlap, one can very quickly eclipse the other. We saw that manifest later in the final COP29 text, which - buckling under pressure from a group of petrostates - failed to either repeat COP28's affirmation about transitioning away from fossil fuels or to push further towards a fossil fuel phaseout.
Fossil fuel expansion undermines Belem's COP30
With COP's 30th edition taking place in the home of the Amazon rainforest, the so-called "forests COP" had a symbolic tone to it, which its presidency attempted to transform into a new era of "climate urgency" - countering some of the oil and gas interests that had infiltrated the summit.
Unfortunately, Belem's galvanising rhetoric was undermined by the ambitions of Brazil's oil and gas company Petrobras.
With one month to go until world leaders and campaigners were due to meet at COP30, Petrobras received the green light to start drilling offshore in the Foz de Amazonas basin, home both to a critical coral reef system and to coastal Indigenous communities.
We calculated that future production from offshore Brazilian fields - including blocks sold close to the mouth of the Amazon River - would produce enough oil and gas to add 15.6 billion tonnes of carbon emissions, if burned, to the atmosphere by 2100. That amounted to more than a tenth of Earth's remaining carbon budget in 2025.
Another analysis found that Petrobras was committed to increasing its oil production by almost a third between 2024 and 2030, which would make it among the world's most aggressive expanders of any major oil producer globally - second only to TotalEnergies.
Back at the climate conference, efforts to commit to an end to the fossil fuel era were once again frustrated by a coordinated group of petrostates, with any mention of fossil fuels omitted from the final texts.
Global coordination on the task of transitioning away from fossil fuels - including the creation of a fossil fuel roadmap - has since fallen to a "coalition of the willing", who met for the first time in Santa Marta in April 2026.
Empty promises at the "implementation COP"?
While there are glimmers of opportunity ahead at COP31 around critical minerals and the just transition, we remain sceptical about how far this year's climate summit can push action on fossil fuels - particularly given the oil, gas and coal ambitions of co-hosts Türkiye and Australia.
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Our new analysis details the litany of oil deals that Türkiye's state-owned oil and gas company Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) has secured since Türkiye's successful bid to host COP31. We also reveal that the company is set to almost triple its fossil gas production by 2035, from 8.2 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2025 to over 22bcm.
By 2050, we have found that Australian majors Woodside and Santos could produce over 1.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent from assets that have not yet been approved for development.
This is particularly galling for a country that claims to be representing the interests of the Pacific, where multiple island nations face being flooded by encroaching sea levels due to global heating, making their residents' homes uninhabitable.
Surely the best action that the world's third largest fossil fuel exporter could take on these communities' behalf would be to clamp down on its oil and gas production, not add new assets into the mix.
Of course, there's not a direct correlation between these host countries' fossil fuel interests and the diluted climate action that we've seen in recent years at COP, but it does point to a systemic problem.
No host country, or its presidency, can claim to lead the energy transition by example while crossing their fingers behind their back. If we are to truly rid COP of the fossil fuel industry's grip, then the least we should expect from the hosts is a fair and fast phase-out of dirty fossil fuel production.
Authors
Becca Inglis, Editorial Content Officer
