Oil and gas companies like Shell, BP and Equinor were represented at shipping climate talks
Lobbyists from oil companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco joined government negotiators at recent secretive talks on how to cut emissions from the shipping sector, Climate Home has learned.
Climate Home identified ten oil and gas company lobbyists and over 50 employees of the shipping industry on the participant list of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) talks, which the media and public were barred from.
Shipping uses the dirtiest part of a barrel of oil to fuel its vessels and oil companies are likely to struggle to sell that part elsewhere if the industry moves to cleaner fuels based on green hydrogen.
Lack of transparency
Aoife O’Leary is the director of the Sasha Coalition and was among the 44-strong delegation of climate campaigners at the talks, which took place in London at the end of June.
She said that the IMO, the UN’s shipping arm, “violates international standards on transparency in environmental decision making”.
“There are too few climate vulnerable countries participating in the room due to resource limitations while other delegations are overloaded with industry representatives,” said O’Leary.
The cost of attending several weeks of talks in London is too much for many poorer, smaller and more distant governments.
O’Leary said that there are “many interests looking not to fuels that can solve the climate crisis, but rather to expand their sales of fossil fuels by pushing gas as a ‘transition fuel’ for shipping”.
Rasmus Bjerring Larsen is a policy officer at Green Transition Denmark who was at the talks. He told Climate Home: “Industry involvement at the IMO is overwhelming, particularly from big oil and ship owners. Meanwhile civil society and especially media representation is marginal.”
Crunch talks
The week-long meeting, known as the inter-sessional working group, was the behind-closed-doors precursor to a more public week of government discussions about shipping’s climate strategy.
At stake were the questions of what net zero target to set for the industry and whether to set interim 2030 and 2040 targets and consider a tax on ships’ emissions. The shipping industry contributes 3% of global emissions – more than Japan.
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At the end of the two weeks, governments agreed to target net zero “by or around, ie close to 20%” and cut emissions by 20% by 2030 and 70% by 2040, compared to 2008 levels.
Lobbyists on the guestlist
Governments bring delegations to the meeting, usually made up of government staff but sometimes including corporate lobbyists or climate campaigners.
Several nations brought lobbyists from oil and gas companies based in their countries. Norway’s delegation included two advisers from Equinor, that of Canada had a regulatory affairs analyst from Irving Oil, and Indonesia brought someone from Pertamina.
The Swiss delegation featured no government employees. Its only representative was Claudio Abbate, the vice-president for government affairs of the Swiss-headquartered Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), which is investing in ships powered by fossil gas.
MSC’s biggest competitors were also there. CMA CGM was a guest of the French government, Cosco of the Chinese delegation and Maersk – the most climate-ambitious container shipping company – was part of the Danish delegation.
A host of governments, including Japan, Greece and Germany, brought representatives of their domestic shipping industry trade associations.
The Cook Islands was represented by an Englishman called Ian Finley, who has worked for a trade association representing the chemical shipping industry.
Observer groups
Other industry representatives attended as observers. Shell lobbyist Alex Revans, ExxonMobil’s Christophe Pouts and Saudi Aramco scientist Hassan Alzain were part of the delegation from the oil industry’s environmental lobby group Ipieca.
At the meeting, Ipieca argued in a written submission that the term “lower [greenhouse gas] emissions energies” should be used instead of stricter terms such as “zero-emission fuels”.
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They added that carbon offsets from outside the shipping sector should be allowed to contribute to industry’s emissions targets.
As at previous shipping talks, Brazil’s delegation included lobbyists from Brazilian mining company Vale.
Brazil was the strongest oppo
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