"‘Absolute scandal’: UAE state oil firm able to read Cop28 climate summit emails", 7 June 2023

"The United Arab Emirates’ state oil company has been able to read emails to and from the Cop28 climate summit office and was consulted on how to respond to a media inquiry, the Guardian can reveal.

The UAE is hosting the UN climate summit in November and the president of Cop28 is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). The revelations have been called “explosive” and a “scandal” by lawmakers.

The Cop28 office had claimed its email system was “standalone” and “separate” from that of Adnoc. But expert technical analysis showed the office shared email servers with Adnoc. After the Guardian’s inquiries, the Cop28 office switched to a different server on Monday...

Replies to a Guardian email to the Cop28 office requesting reaction to these comments, which did not mention Adnoc, contained the text “Adnoc classification: internal”.

The French MEP Manon Aubry, said: “This is an absolute scandal. An oil and gas company has found its way to the core of the organisation in charge of coordinating the phasing out of oil and gas. It is like having a tobacco multinational overseeing the internal work of the World Health Organization.”

Pascoe Sabido, at Corporate Europe Observatory and co-coordinator of the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition of more than 450 organisations, said the revelations were outrageous and that Al Jaber’s appointment had been “a huge blow to the credibility” of the UN’s climate body, the UNFCCC.

“It’s completely inappropriate that an oil corporation was consulted and it exposes just how influential it has been in shaping what gets presented to the outside world,” Sabido said. “Until world governments accept that fossil fuels need to be left in the ground and their lobbyists are no longer allowed to write the rules of climate action, this will keep happening.”...

The Guardian discovered the links between the UAE’s Cop28 office and Adnoc after requesting a response to Figueres’s criticisms in mid-May. When asked why the email replies contained the text “Adnoc classification: internal”, the Cop28 office said it had “sought input from several subject matter experts regarding emissions, including Adnoc” and that the internal classification mark had become part of the email chain as a result...

However, expert technical analysis for the Guardian of the headers of emails from the Cop28 office and from an earlier email chain between the Guardian and the oil company revealed that Adnoc servers were involved in both sending and receiving emails from the Cop28 office."