By William James and Simon Jessop
ANTALYA, Turkey, Nov 12 (Reuters) – Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodriguez told the COP31 climate conference on Thursday that the country has the sovereign right to develop its oil industry, even as it recognises the importance of combatting climate change.
Her comments at the UN talks on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast jar with efforts by other conference leaders to convince global governments to accelerate a shift from carbon-emitting fossil fuels.
But they dovetail with the United States’ efforts to raise billions of dollars towards increasing oil output in Venezuela, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
“We reaffirm our sovereign right to strengthen our energy and oil industry as a driver of our national development,” Rodriguez told the summit. “It is possible to grow and protect the environment at the same time.”
Venezuela’s forests acted as a “lung for the planet”, absorbing more carbon than the country emits, she added. She did not address the impact that oil exported from the country had on global emissions.
President Donald Trump, who withdrew the United States from formal climate cooperation last year after calling global warming a hoax, has said investing in Venezuela’s oil can bolster national security by increasing Western Hemisphere energy supplies.
BRITAIN’S BURNHAM BACKS RENEWABLES
Earlier on Thursday, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the conference that energy supply disruptions from the US-Israeli war with Iran and Russia’s war with Ukraine showed the need for countries to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy.
“It is now plain for everyone to see that if we depend on energy we do not control, then we leave ourselves exposed to prices we cannot control,” he said. “The shift to clean energy is the only route to energy security.”
Thursday is the fifth day of the two-week COP31 conference where representatives from nearly 200 countries are trying to agree a deal to improve progress in tackling climate change.
A UN report last month found the world was on course to break through the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming limit that countries had agreed to pursue under the 2015 Paris Agreement to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
(Reporting by William James, Valerie Volcovici, Simon Jessop, and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; editing by Barbara Lewis)
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