Every year, the world gathers at the Conference of the Parties (COP), a gathering heralded as the supreme arena where climate science meets diplomacy, where mitigation targets are agreed, adaptation plans drafted, loss and damage acknowledged. Yet year after year, one question looms larger than any official communiqué: when the hosts of these summits are the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers, how serious are we really about phasing out oil and gas?
Oil Nations Hosting Climate Talks: The Irony We Ignore
Consider the parade of hosts. At COP27 in Egypt (2022), Egypt producing about 694,000 barrels of oil per day used the event to anchor its ambition around gas exports as a “transition fuel,” while hosting over 630 fossil fuel lobbyists whose deals overshadowed talk of phase out. At COP28 in Dubai (2023), the UAE pumping roughly 4.85 million barrels per day saw the summit’s language shift from “phase out” to “transition away,” reflecting fossil industry pressure. At COP29 in Baku (2024), Azerbaijan producing around 480,000 barrels per day framed new gas projects as “energy security” while fossil lobby attendance hit record levels. And now, at COP30 in Belém, Brazil (2025), a country producing about 3.7 million barrels per day has approved new offshore drilling at the mouth of the Amazon even while its deforestation rate has dropped by half.
The irony? That the planet’s richest rainforest and the world’s fossil giants appear in the same breath.
Leaders at COP 28
The Big Question: Is Oil Really Our Problem?
So let us ask the blunt question: is oil really our problem, or do we simply lack the courage to challenge it? The facts are sobering. A report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) found that over the period 1970 to 2021, weather, climate and water related disasters claimed roughly 2 million lives and caused around US$4.3 trillion in economic losses. More than 90 percent of that mortality burden fell on developing countries.
A fact sheet from the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that climate change threatens the core ingredients of good health, clean air, safe water, nutritious food and safe shelter, potentially raising deaths from heat stress, diarrhoea, malaria and malnutrition by an additional 250,000 per year between 2030 and 2050. These are not abstract figures, they are real world casualties of policy failure.
When Fossil Money Drives Climate Action
Yet while the world talks about these numbers, the system that fuels them remains largely untouched. Big oil’s role in hosting, financing, influencing the agenda of COPs is hardly hidden. The crème de la crème of fossil finance, the friendly nods between states and state backed oil companies, the very presence of fossil fuel expansion plans made on the eve of summits, it all smacks of choreographed inertia.
Take Brazil’s example, it cuts deforestation, yet its oil production rises. The science is clear, you cannot claim to save the Amazon while expanding fossil fuels. The credibility of climate diplomacy depends on consistency. When oil rigs fire up months ahead of a COP, the message is simple, proclamations matter less than capital flows.
Nigeria’s Mirror: The Niger Delta Reality
Now let’s drag in another layer, from home. Within the communities that host oil infrastructure, what do the people say? In a recent survey carried out by Lincgreen Climate Change Initiative across five host communities in Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers States, 92 percent of the 175 respondents said they did not want oil to be phased out in their communities. The study, which used questionnaires, interviews and a few focus group discussions, revealed an uncomfortable truth: people in these communities see oil not just as an extractive industry but as their only bargaining power, their identity, their hope of benefit. Even as their environment is polluted, livelihoods destroyed, and self esteem eroded, they still cling to the promise of oil royalties because nothing else has been offered. That’s not loyalty, that’s dependence. And dependence cannot steer a just transition.
Lincgreen Research Work, Bayelsa
Who Enables Big Oil?
So who is the enemy? Big oil?
Maybe. Or is it the system that allows big oil to wear a green agbada, show up at COPs, shout “transition” during the day and sign new drilling contracts at night, while communities remain in darkness? Without the blessing of national politics and global financial structures that enable them, these companies would have far less power. The decision makers remain the states, the oil rich states, the very hosts of our climate dialogue.
And so the wild goose chase continues.
Nigerian’s Presidency order for resumption of oil activities (BBC NEWS)
Where Do We Go From Here?
But if we are serious about moving forward, we need a few clear pivots:
- Expose the host state paradox: If a COP host is expanding oil or gas production while a climate conference is underway, that must not pass as mere coincidence. We need transparent scrutiny, not photo ops.
- Connect grassroots with finance: The big grammar of mitigation must be grounded in economic empowerment for vulnerable regions. Poverty trapped communities must receive alternative livelihoods before “phasing out” their only source of hope.
- Redirect climate finance to transition makers, not prolongers: Money must flow away from fossil expansion and toward SMEs, renewables, and adaptation in flood hit communities, especially across Africa.
- Demand policy coherence: Mitigation goals, national policy, and corporate practice must align. When fossil firms say they buy into transition plans, they must prove it, not just by pledges but by action.
- Empower local agency: In places like the Niger Delta, the question is not “Can oil be phased out?” but “Will something viable replace oil for this community?” Without infrastructure, alternatives, training, and real participation, a phase out becomes a fancy story.
Lincgreen Volunteers and ESFN match for Climate Action
The Final Thought
In short, the COP remains the world’s largest gathering for climate conversation, but conversation alone won’t save us. The era of big talk and small action must end. If climate policy allows the richest fossil producers to host the forum while still increasing production, it is not about climate, it is about power, politics and profit.
Oil might not be the whole problem, but until we dismantle the system that celebrates oil while promising its end, we won’t move beyond the script. We can no longer partake in the theatre of transition. We must insist on the real shift, from fossil fuel fidelity to fair, just and resilient futures, both for the planet and for communities in Nigeria that live the consequences every day.
Perhaps one day, instead of hosting COP in five-star hotels and glossy cities, the world could hold a session right inside one of the flood-ravaged communities in Nigeria, maybe in Niger State or at the Mokwa IDP camp where over 200 people died from climate-induced flooding. Let negotiators walk through muddy camps, see families sleeping on broken mats, smell the rot of destroyed farmlands, and maybe, just maybe, climate finance will stop sounding like a PowerPoint presentation and start looking like urgent action.
Written by Diolu Tobechukwu Prosper for LINCGREEN CLIMATE CHANGE INITIATIVE
Co-founder Lincgreen Prospects, LINCGREEN Prospects