UK lobbyists paid $5M to “greenwash” oil-rich Azerbaijan: report

PanARMENIAN.Net - A lobbying firm with close links to senior British politicians and the oil industry is being paid $4.7million to help Azerbaijan’s authoritarian regime enhance its image ahead of the crucial UN COP climate summit next month, Democracy for Sale reports.

The lobbying giant Teneo, which employs Labour’s former Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw as well as Boris Johnson’s former business chief, has been awarded the seven-month contract which campaigners claim will help the oil-rich state “greenwash” its reputation .

On 11 November, the UN will host its COP 29 climate change summit in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital. The choice of Azerbaijan as a host for the summit has been controversial. Its economy is highly dependent on fossil fuels and critics have pointed to the regime’s human rights record including the imprisonment of climate activists.

An investigation by Democracy for Sale in conjunction with the i Paper and SourceMaterial, reveals that as part of the Teneo contract, one of its British consultants will be paid “a monthly fee of $25,000, plus bonuses totalling $50,000” while only working on a “part-time basis”.

Teneo’s lobbying team working on the Azerbaijan contract includes Boris Johnson’s former chief business adviser Alex Hickman.

According to US documents, Teneo will provide “media training” and advise on “narrative development” for the hosts of the COP summit. The lobbying firm’s work will be led by its Global Strategy President Geoff Morrell who is a former executive at oil giant BP, which is Azerbaijan’s biggest foreign investor.

While working for BP, Morrell chided “opportunistic” environmentalists for exaggerating the impact of the company’s Deepwater Horizon explosion, an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people and discharged four million barrels of oil into the ocean

Climate campaign groups have accused Teneo of helping Azerbaijan to “greenwash” its image. Lela Stanley, senior investigator at Global Witness said: “Firms helping petrostates like Azerbaijan … are complicit in greenwashing.

“Instead of focusing on glossing up their image, Azerbaijan and its partners should be making fossil fuel companies pay in to the UN's Loss and Damage Fund. Planet-wrecking polluters should pay for the devastation they've caused.”

In addition to its work for the Azerbaijan regime, Teneo has also signed lucrative deals to work with Saudi Arabia and the UAE on other contracts, according to our analysis of US government filings. It also works for some of the world’s leading fossil fuel firms including British Gas owner Centrica and mining giant BHP.

Kathy Mulvey, campaigner at the Union of Concerned Scientists said: “It’s a clear conflict of interest for a PR firm to be paid to serve both oil and gas company clients that are driving the climate crisis and the host country government charged with shepherding the upcoming international climate talks.”