It’s not often that an item on the BBC’s national UK news makes me splutter into my tea but that is what happened last night. This is because I had been accused of being complicit in a cover-up which allegedly impacted an entire nation.

Some context first.

Today the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP 28) begins in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and leaders from the 200+ signatory Governments to COP will arrive, look earnest for a few days and state boldly that “something must be done” about climate change before heading home in their private jets.

Of course, as a previous resident of the UAE, and rather as I expected, the media feeding frenzy has already commenced with the main assertion that an oil and gas producing nation has no right to be hosting COP28. Apparently the Energy Transition should not have a start point.

As a former Oil and Gas company man, I was intending to write about the need for the industry to be better at communication within this transition (watch this blog) but I return to my complicity in a national cover-up.

Jumping on the feeding frenzy bandwagon (food-truck maybe?) the BBC ran a summary story on their main evening bulletin accusing the UAE of “hiding” from their own people the flaring from oil and gas rigs “hundreds of miles” offshore and, as such, exposing them unwittingly to a host of respiratory diseases. The piece was from a longer 30 minute documentary called “Breathless”. You can find it on iPlayer (don’t mention it BBC) and I would say it is worth a watch but only to witness a shameless bit of opportunism to bash the UAE as COP host (sorry BBC).

The programme starts by giving the expectation that the content will be about how the UAE’s Oil and Gas Industry is contributing to poor air quality and consequent health issues in the country. Having done so, the programme then switches inexplicably (after 40 seconds) to a programme about Kuwait, Iraq and Iran’s oil and gas industry and similar health issues. After twenty minutes of the thirty minute programme it returns to the UAE to assert that the country’s own oil and gas industry is negatively impacting the health of its citizens.

Other than the fact that the assertion is backed only by anecdotal evidence using the classic emotional hook of individual sufferers with no supporting data, the film-makers lose all credibility through one specific but dubious assertion and one fact which is plainly and demonstrably wrong.

The reason for my earlier tea spluttering was the specific assertion that the UAE was “hiding” from UAE citizens flaring from oil and gas rigs “hundreds of miles” offshore. As I was, until last year, VP of Corporate Communications and Community Relations at the UAE National Oil Company’s Offshore Operating Company I took this personally!

So let’s start with “hundreds of miles offshore”.

I have stood on the helideck of the Umm Lulu (Mother of Pearl) Production Platform and seen clearly the city of Abu Dhabi just 30 km away (19 miles). The neighbouring Umm Al Dalkh platform is even closer. On a clear day, and particularly at night, both are clearly visible from Abu Dhabi.

Umm Lulu was started up as recently as 2020 and, when a production platform is started, unfortunately flaring of surplus gas is required (the programme makers not once pointed out that flaring is largely a safety mechanism). So, well in advance of the startup, we directly communicated with over thirty community organisations, including the media, emergency services, hotels, trade associations etc. to ensure there was no alarm among the general public. I should say that such an approach was not at all unusual in the company which had very well defined social impact policies. The startup occurred with little public comment and so I have to come clean and say that the BBC’s alleged cover up was an unmitigated failure.

Secondly the programme mentioned its analysis of satellite data to substantiate their second assertion that the UAE had not in fact reduced flaring over the last decade. I am not sure which models they are referring to but let us look at the facts demonstrated by the World Bank’s figures which also use satellite data. The data also shows the UAE’s production figures over the same period taken from the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy.  The UAE figures are as follows:

This clearly contradicts the BBC’s claim that the UAE has not reduced flaring. The trend is not huge but clearly downward over the last decade. More significant though is the fact that this was achieved while production grew.

Oops BBC – care to reveal your data?

But does all this matter as we know that the world must transition away from fossil fuels anyway? Well – yes it does. This is more about the integrity of reporting on the Energy Transition and the reputation of an organisation that should know better. Governments, business and consumers all have a responsibility in the Energy Transition’s success but so too has the media. The world has enough trouble trying to understand the complexity of the issues raised at COP without having to deal with misinformation driven by a desire for ratings or a first place in the clickbait awards.