The Guardian: In Cop29 host Baku, the flares of oil refineries stand out clearly against the night-time skyline

Cop29 host Baku has cleaned up since its Black City days – but this summit needs to do more than whitewash the facade of a petrostate, The Guardian writes.

Just a few miles from the site of the next U.N. climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, is a district that for more than a century was known as Black City. As noted, every house and factory was thickly stained with soot, from the oil that was extracted and refined here, by the shores of the Caspian Sea. Baku was the world’s first oil town: pioneering wells were dug in the 1840s, followed by refineries from 1859. 

There are still oil wells in Baku, their piston pumps nodding in rhythm while the flares of refineries stand out clearly against the night-time skyline. Today, fossil fuels make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports: the petrostate pioneer is still one of the top 10 most oil- and gas-dependent economies in the world. The oil country is now turning into a gas giant. Azerbaijan plans to increase its gas output by a third in the next decade. Mohamed Adow, the founding director of the thinktank Power Shift Africa, said Azerbaijan’s actions to mitigate the environmental damage caused by oil and gas so far were not encouraging.