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Exposed: The Oil and Gas Giants Profiting Most From Israel's Gaza Genocide
"The complicity of international corporations and governments in fueling Israel's war machine represents the latest chapter in a long history of fossil fuel companies enabling genocide and mass atrocities," said one campaigner.
Nov 14, 2024
On the fourth day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Azerbaijan, green groups highlighted how fossil fuel companies "enable and profit from Israel's genocide in Gaza," continuing "a long history of the industry's complicity in mass atrocities worldwide."
"The fossil fuel industry is culpable in death and destruction around the world, not only through the climate crisis they cause but through the violence they fuel," Oil Change International said in a statement Thursday.
"Every shipment of oil to Israel carries the weight of Palestinian lives."
The group—along with others including Friends of the Earth Palestine/PENGON and Tipping Point U.K.—is seizing the opportunity presented by COP29 to draw attention to an aspect of the Gaza war often overlooked amid the staggering death and destruction wrought by Israel's 13-month onslaught, which a United Nations panel on Thursday
said is consistent with the "characteristics of genocide."
"Investor-owned and private oil companies supply 66% of oil to Israel—more than a third of that from major oil companies like Chevron, Shell, and BP—despite genocide warnings from the International Court of Justice," Oil Change said. "BP is among the top corporate suppliers of oil to Israel. It operates and is the largest owner of the BTC pipeline, which transports Azeri oil that is ultimately sent to Israel."
The BTC pipeline runs from Baku—the Azeri capital and COP29 host city on the Caspian Sea—through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey and, according to Oil Change, supplies Israel with 28% of its oil, belying Thursday's claim by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that the country has severed all ties with Israel.
An
investigation published in September by Energy Embargo for Palestine showed how oil transported via the BTC pipeline is refined into jet fuel for Israel Defense Forces warplanes.
Oil Change continued:
BP has also been granted gas exploration licenses in occupied Palestinian waters. By providing it with fuel, BP enables the Israeli government to commit genocide in Gaza. Chevron operates and partially owns the two largest Israeli-claimed fossil gas fields, Tamar and Leviathan, making it the main international actor extracting fossil gas claimed by Israel in the Mediterranean. In 2022, 70% of Israel's power was generated from fossil gas extracted by Chevron. Through the millions of dollars it pays Israel for its gas extraction licenses, Chevron is also directly contributing to financing Israel's regime of genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism, and occupation.
"The complicity of international corporations and governments in fueling Israel's war machine represents the latest chapter in a long history of fossil fuel companies enabling genocide and mass atrocities,"
Mohammed Usrof, a member of the Palestinian Youth Climate Negotiation Team at COP29 who lost 21 relatives to Israel's onslaught, said in a statement Thursday. "Every shipment of oil to Israel carries the weight of Palestinian lives."
Tipping Point U.K. organizer Sadie DeCost said that "BP originated as a key enabler of the British empire, and continues as one of the top 10 largest carbon emitters in the world."
"It operates and is the largest owner of the BTC pipeline, which ships Azeri oil to fuel Israel's genocide in Gaza," DeCost added. "BP's historic colonial harms continue through its support of violent regimes. Its emissions are estimated to cause hundreds of billions of dollars of loss and damage. We must shut down BP to end this injustice, and demand climate reparations for impacted communities around the world."
Mahmoud Nawajaa, general coordinator of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, lamented that "criminal fossil fuel companies that have shamefully been invited to join COP29 are not only responsible for destroying the planet, they are also responsible for fueling genocide and other atrocity crimes around the world, from Gaza to Myanmar to the Amazon region."
"Prime among these is Chevron, [which] continues to supply Israel and its military with energy and millions of dollars in tax revenues through fossil fuel extraction activities in the Mediterranean," Nawajaa added.
Oil Change International U.S. campaign manager Allie Rosenbluth asserted Thursday that "the fossil fuel industry is not just destroying our climate—it's actively profiting from genocide."
"These companies and the governments enabling them know exactly how their supplies are being used against Palestinian civilians," she continued. "Palestinian groups and their allies around the world have called for an energy and arms embargo demanding governments and companies cease all fuel and arms shipments to Israel until it ends the genocide and its regime of apartheid against the Palestinian people."
"The fossil fuel industry is not just destroying our climate—it's actively profiting from genocide."
"Despite these strong demands, the U.S. continues to be a key supplier of JP8 jet fuel to Israel, which is crucial for its military operations," Rosenbluth added. "This isn't just business—it's complicity in mass atrocities."
Oil Change noted that while many governments have prioritized profit and national interest over human rights in Palestine, Colombia—which is led by leftist President Gustavo Petro—"has set a strong precedent and issued an embargo on coal exports to Israel" as part of a broader suspension of relations due to the Gaza onslaught.
This is more than just a symbolic move, as Israel imports more than half of its coal from Colombia.
"Others must follow suit," Oil Change stressed.
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Climate Campaigners Demand COP29 Free of 'False' Finance Solutions
"We are hurtling toward 3° of warming; human rights can't withstand dangerous distractions," said one climate justice advocate.
Nov 11, 2024
The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference has been called the "climate finance" conference, with participants expected to establish a new annual target for providing funds for the Global South to confront the climate crisis—but campaigners on Monday expressed concern that on the first day of the summit, there are already signs leaders will push for "false solutions" that only perpetuate planetary heating.
An annual climate finance target of $100 billion was set by policymakers in 2009, but that pledge expires at the end of 2024 and advocates say it's just a fraction of what is needed to help developing countries invest in climate crisis mitigation and adaptation to planetary heating.
Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network, which includes more than 1,900 global civil society groups, told The Guardian that "a down payment of $5 trillion" annually in climate finance is needed, noting that "the debt is much larger."
But Sébastien Duyck, senior attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law, said the Azerbaijani presidency of the 29th Conference of the Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) is already looking "to speed up the endorsement of new standards on carbon markets."
"This is extremely alarming. If this moves forward, it would be a real cop-out by governmental delegations gathered in Baku," said Duyck, referring to the capital of Azerbaijan, where COP29 is being held over the next 11 days.
Duyck pointed to new standards that were passed ahead of COP29 by a supervisory body with the aim of operationalizing and expanding carbon markets—pricing mechanisms that allow governments and other entities to trade greenhouse gas emission "credits."
"Fully operationalizing carbon markets on Day 1 would set a terrible precedent for the next two weeks, starting COP29 on a disastrous note and eroding the trust needed to achieve a bold, transformative agreement on finance," said Jax Bongon, climate justice policy officer for IBON International.
Proponents say carbon markets allow wealthy countries or corporations to purchase "carbon credits" from countries in the Global South; in exchange, governments in developing countries are paid to build renewable energy infrastructure, plant trees, or take other sustainable steps.
Those steps are thought to "buy time" for the wealthy country or company to cut down on their own pollution. But the scheme has been exposed as allowing companies to continue polluting without the supposed "offsets" actually helping to mitigate the climate crisis.
Lise Masson, climate justice and energy advocacy officer at Friends of the Earth (FOE), emphasized that "carbon markets are not climate finance, and we cannot accept these neocolonial schemes to be propped up as a success of COP29."
"Decisions at COP29 threaten to open the floodgates for a global carbon market that would have devastating impacts on communities in the Global South, on Indigenous peoples, and on small peasant farmers first and foremost," said Masson.
Marta Scaaf, who directs Amnesty International's climate justice program, warned COP29 delegates may "bypass accountability norms on Day 1 and issue recommendations to govern carbon markets, which are essentially pollution permits."
Essop suggested that carbon markets are being pushed as a false solution in order to save wealthy countries from having to provide what is needed for the Global South to mitigate the climate crisis and adapt to the hurricanes, flooding, drought, and other extreme conditions that have been linked to planetary heating.
"Five trillion dollars is what we come here to demand," Essop said. "Governments out there are absolutely capable of finding the money that does wrong in the world. They found the money for military spending. They found the money for the genocide in Gaza. They find the money to subsidize and support the fossil fuel industry. To come here and say that they do not have money is absolutely untruthful and unacceptable."
Meena Raman of FOE Malaysia stressed that climate finance "isn't charity; it's reparations for a climate debt long overdue."
"Grants must replace loans, and loss and damage funding must also be scaled up tremendously to meet the needs of impacted countries in the Global South," said Raman. "Debt cancellation for the Global South is essential to break cycles of injustice. The money exists: redirecting funds from global military spending and climate justice are paths forward."
The international human rights group Global Witness drove home the point by taking over the web address that some might arrive at if they were looking for more information about COP29.
Visitors to cop29.com on Monday were met with the words "Payback Time."
"We've taken over cop29.com to unite the millions of people demanding justice," said Global Witness. "This summer broke heat records again. Wildfires, droughts, and storms are killing thousands and driving up the cost of food, energy, and insurance. Worse is coming."
"COP29 is our moment," added the group. "The loss and damage fund was created to help developing nations that are being hit hardest by climate chaos... Fossil fuel companies rake in billions. They must pay into the fund to help communities rebuild, adapt, and repair some of the damage they've caused."
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Greta Thunberg Won't Attend UN Climate Talks in 'Yet Another Authoritarian Petrol State'
"We can't legitimize COP meetings in their current form," Thunberg said. "The last three years, they've taken place in authoritarian regimes, and holding them in such places leads nowhere."
Nov 05, 2024
When national delegates and civil society representatives gather in Baku, Azerbaijan next week for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, one prominent climate voice will not be among them—Greta Thunberg.
The 21-year-old Swedish activist said she would not attend COP29 due to Azerbaijan's authoritarian record and reliance on fossil fuels, and criticized the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for naming it as a host.
"It is extreme hypocrisy of the UNFCCC to let yet another authoritarian petrol state host the COP," Thunberg said in a video posted on social media.
Thunberg expressed concerns about Azerbaijan's record of stifling internal dissent as well as its ethnic cleansing of Armenians. The U.N. summit comes a little over a year after Azerbaijani forces entered the disputed, ethnic Armenian-controlled territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, prompting most ethnic Armenians in the area to flee across the border to Armenia. Armenia told the International Court of Justice in April that Azerbaijan had "completed" ethnic cleansing in the territory and was "erasing all traces of ethnic Armenians' presence" there.
At the same time, Thunberg added her voice to the many environmental advocates who have called out Azerbaijan for planning to expand its fossil fuel production. Azerbaijan's selection was especially controversial because it came on the heels of the United Arab Emirates' hosting of COP28, which also prompted backlash due to the country's human rights record and reliance on oil and gas. Both COPs also came under fire for selecting presidents with close ties to state-run oil companies.
"It is a slap in the face to all the people who are suffering from the climate emergency and from the repression and oppression of the Azerbaijani regime," Thunberg said.
"Climate activism and human rights are united."
There is another reason that Thunberg cannot attend COP29: It has a closed land border, which means that people can only enter the country by plane, something Thunberg has vowed not to do for climate reasons.
"The population in Azerbaijan is trapped. They can't travel in or out of the country except through the airport. Even if I could go there, I wouldn't. I don't want to legitimize the regime," Thunberg toldBlankspot.
Instead, she is traveling through Europe ahead of COP29, coming as close as possible to Azerbaijan. Currently, she is in Georgia where people are in the streets protesting a parliamentary election they say was rigged by the ruling party with help from Russia. After COP29 starts, she plans to continue on to Armenia.
During COP29, she will meet with Azerbaijani activists who are not in the country, as well as activists from Georgia and Armenia.
She told Blackspot that one purpose of her trip is to "highlight that we can't legitimize COP meetings in their current form. The last three years, they've taken place in authoritarian regimes, and holding them in such places leads nowhere."
More broadly, she also aims to foreground the relationship between the climate crisis and human rights.
"In countries like Sweden, many people are surprised when you talk about how climate activism, the LGBTQ movement, and human rights are interconnected," she said. "But in countries where people face repression and rights violations every day, activists see a clearer connection."
"Of course, we can't talk about the climate until our fundamental human rights are met," Thunberg continued. "'We can't talk about the climate if we can't go out on the street and hold a sign,' they say. Unfortunately, the climate crisis is extremely urgent, so it has to happen simultaneously. Climate activism and human rights are united."
Thunberg's remarks come as there has been an increasing crackdown on climate and other forms of nonviolent protest, including in so-called democratic countries. In its most recent report on the killing of environmental defenders, Global Witness observed that countries like the U.S., U.K., and E.U. member states had continued to criminalize climate protesters in 2023, with new laws targeting dissent and dolling out harsh penalties for common protest tactics.
"Nonviolent, nondestructive climate protest is increasingly being subjected to criminal prosecution, while punishments are being ratcheted up to levels befitting violent and far more serious crimes," author Stan Cox observed in October.
As for the outcome of COP29 itself, Thunberg does not hold high expectations.
"The only thing that will come out of it is loopholes, more negotiations, and symbolic decisions that look good on paper but are really just greenwashing," Thunberg said.
However, she maintained faith in the importance of speaking out on climate and other issues.
"Every time those in power get a chance to act, they choose not to and instead listen to industries that destroy the planet and violate human rights, rather than doing what's right," Thunberg said. " I want to spread awareness, focus on grassroots activism, and support those who are trying to make a difference."
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