UK lobbyists accused of ‘greenwashing’ oil-rich Azerbaijan before Baku COP summit

A lobbying firm with close links to a former Cabinet minister and the fossil fuels industry is being paid $4.7m to help oil-rich Azerbaijan enhance its image ahead of the crucial UN COP climate summit next month, the i Paper can reveal.

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

On 11 November, the UN will host its COP 29 climate change summit in Baku, the Azerbaijan capital. It will be the first major global climate meeting after the US presidential election and will set the tone for discussions for tackling global warming. The talks will involve world leaders, ministers and negotiators and have a particular focus on how to make finance available to developing countries for climate action.

The choice of Azerbaijan as a host for the summit has been controversial. Its economy is highly dependent on fossil fuels and campaigners have criticised the regime’s human rights record, including the imprisonment of climate activists

An investigation by the i, in conjunction with the newsletter Democracy for Sale 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”.

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.

Despite hosting the environmental summit, Azerbaijan is planning to ramp up oil and gas production over the next decade, according to a report from a German NGO.

The country, which earns 60% of its entire revenue from oil and gas, has also massively increased its gas exports to Europe since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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 Azerbajian regime, Teneo has also signed lucrative deals to work with major fossil fuel producers Saudi Arabia and the UAE on other contracts, according to i‘s 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.”

According to the US documents, Teneo’s lobbying teamworking on the Azerbajian contract includes Boris Johnson’s former chief business adviser Alex Hickman.

Former Labour Cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw joined Teneo after the general election (Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty)

Shortly after the general election, the firm sought to bolster their links to the Labour government by appointing former Labour Cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw as a senior advisor.

Although the US documents do not list Bradshaw as one of the individuals working on the Azerbajian COP contract, when he was hired by Teneo, the firm’s UK chief executive Nick Claydon said: “Ben’s deep insights and experience in helping to understand the priorities and approach of the new Labour administration will be of tremendous benefit to Teneo’s clients around the world.”

Teneo’s senior managing director is Patrick Loughlan, one of Tony’s Blair’s former Downing Street special advisors and Labour’s former director of policy and head of research.

The firm’s managing director Robert Fuller also spent six weeks volunteering to help Labour during the recent election campaign.

According to Amnesty International, Azerbaijan has intensified its crackdown on human rights and media freedom since the country was made host of the world’s most important climate conference.

Prominent climate activist Anar Mammadli was arrested this year on what Amnesty described as “bogus charges” and faces up to eight years in prison. The human rights group said the charges against him were “fabricated and his prosecution is an apparent retaliation for his criticism of the government and his activism”.

Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said: “Azerbaijan is hosting an international conference on climate justice while actively undermining the main pillars of climate activism – repressing all forms of critical expression and protests and dismantling local civil society.”

Days before Mammadli’s arrest, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said that “having oil and gas deposits is not our fault. It’s a gift from God.”

Speaking at a climate diplomacy event in Berlin, Aliyev said that “as the head of a country rich in fossil fuels, of course, we will defend the right of these countries to continue investments and production because the world needs it”.

World leaders, ministers, and negotiators convene at the COP to negotiate and rubber stamp plans to jointly address climate change and its impacts.

Both Teneo and the Azerbajian government declined to comment.