ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, TotalEnergies and oil companies infiltrate the COP

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Representatives linked to fossil fuel lobbyists attended more than 7,000 U.N. climate negotiations or events over the past two decades as part of a campaign to obstruct and influence climate action, a study released Tuesday said.

These conclusions reinforce the call to “exclude the big polluters from the negotiations of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai,” according to the authors of the aforementioned research – Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO), who emphasize that these data are “ just the tip of the iceberg.”

According to sources, since COP9 in 2003, groups such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies (among others) have used their participation in the various COPs to advocate for fossil fuels without declaring their “affiliation”. That is, without mentioning which organizations they work for or what interests they represent, which means they go unnoticed.

Shell is one of the oil companies that sent the most personnel to the COPs

The research shows that over the years, with at least 115 approvals through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Shell sent the most employees to the negotiations and boasted about how they influenced the outcome of COP21, the birthplace of the Paris climate conference Agreement 2015.

Others included Italy’s Eni, which was sued for pushing for greater use of fossil fuels despite knowing its risks, Brazil’s Petrobras, Britain’s BP and America’s Chevron.

Representatives of fossil fuel lobby groups include the CEO of the French company TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, who attended COP27 as part of a German NGO, and Bernard Looney, former CEO of BP, as a member of the Mauritanian delegation.

This study focuses its analysis on the world’s leading oil and gas producers, and since the UNFCCC until recently did not require participants to disclose their affiliations, these KBPO results show only the tip of the iceberg, as many representatives are not included in this study became .