Climate cleanup not up to Third World only

VIENNA: Oil-producing and developing countries should not bear the brunt of efforts to clean up the environment, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) crude producers’ cartel insisted Thursday, ahead of a major climate conference in December.

Developed countries “cannot shift the responsibility of cleaning the world or cleaning the environment on developing countries,” OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah El-Badri told a press conference following a late-night meeting of the cartel at its Vienna headquarters.

Ministers of oil-producing countries met in the Austrian capital late Wednesday night—because of the Muslim fast of Ramadan—to review oil production, but also discussed the upcoming UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.

“We don’t want them to penalize us because we are oil-producing countries,” El-Badri said of the other world powers taking part in the landmark summit.

“Yes, the environment is important. We are concerned about the environment. We are living in the same world and the environment also concerns us, but we don’t want to be penalized,” he added.

Environmental interests have long been at odds with those of oil producers, promoting renewable energies over the more polluting fossil fuels.

Climate change conference

In Copenhagen, world leaders will try to seal a new accord to fight climate change after the Kyoto Protocol requirements expire in 2012.

Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos, Angola’s oil minister and current OPEC president, said in his opening statement at Wednesday’s meeting that the oil producers must defend their interests in Copenhagen.

“Oil producers must ensure that their interests are properly represented in the post-Kyoto agreement,” he told ministers of the OPEC.

“There is much at stake here for both present and future generations in our member countries,” de Vasconcelos added.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, signatory countries are required on average to bring their emissions of “greenhouse” gases 5.2 percent below their 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

“Everybody should fulfill the commitment that has been taken in Kyoto,” El-Badri said Thursday.

“When we go to Copenhagen we would like to see that commitment . . . is on the way to being fulfilled.”

“We are looking to see a win-win situation in Copenhagen, nobody should be penalized, everybody should take his share,” the OPEC secretary-general added.

OPEC’s fears

John Hall, an independent London-based oil analyst, suggested after the meeting that the cartel feared further environmental controls and their effect on oil consumption as consumers turn to other sources of energy.

“As climate change controls come into place, anybody that uses any fuel that pollutes is going to be penalized, which will put an added cost onto oil, so that will have an impact on them [OPEC],” he told Agence France-Presse.

“Once the price of oil gets over the 80 to 90 [dollar] level, and it’s not that far away now . . . alternatives will come into play and environmental controls will kick in and push oil back [up] again.”

“I think they’re in quite a weak position from that point of view,” he said. — AFP