Claire O'Neill, the fired president of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference COP26 and former UK energy minister, actively sought to expand oil exploration in the North Sea and held meetings with fossil fuel companies in 2018, a leading environmental organization said on Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th February, 2020) Claire O'Neill, the fired president of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference COP26 and former UK energy minister, actively sought to expand oil exploration in the North Sea and held meetings with fossil fuel companies in 2018, a leading environmental organization said on Wednesday.
According to Greenpeace's whistleblowing project Unearthed, O'Neill met with representatives from European oil and gas companies in 2018 to promote oil exploration in the North Sea.
A briefing note discovered by Unearthed indicates that O'Neill planned to congratulate the Norwegian company Statoil, now called Equinor, for the 2017 discovery of at least 25 million barrels of oil in the Moray Firth basin off the coast of Scotland.
She also planned to encourage other oil companies to expand their investment in UK oil fields, according to briefing notes ahead of meetings with Shell and ExxonMobil, the whistleblowing project stated.
O'Neill served as the minister of state for energy and clean growth from 2017 to 2019 in the governments of David Cameron and Theresa May. She was replaced in her post after Boris Johnson came to power, and was relieved of her duties as the COP26 president in late January. Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Alok Sharma was appointed the new COP26 president.
Johnson has called 2020 a defining year of climate action and has pledged that the UK will take the lead in finding solutions to meet the challenge of climate change.
