"LONDON - After winning a fraught bid to host next year's United Nations climate talks in Baku, a senior Azerbaijani official promoted the country's gas reserves in aiding the global the energy transition.

"Azerbaijan is also a gas exporting country, and gas - if you compare it with some other sources of energy - is a much cleaner sort of energy," said Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, in a meeting with reporters on Tuesday. "Azerbaijan has quite serious potential of gas," he said.

The country has an estimated 2.5 trillion cubic metres of natural gas reserves, according to the 2021 BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

While the global warming emissions from burning natural gas are lower than those from coal or oil, they remain much higher than green energy sources.

Climate scientists have said that rising production of natural gas is emerging as one of the biggest drivers of climate change, and could cripple efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels."

Gloria Dickie reports for Reuters December 19, 2023. [2]