Saudi Aramco Staff Among IPCC Lead Authors — SkimNews
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- Saudi Aramco has at least two employees serving as IPCC lead authors, including Dr Mustafa Babiker, a 20-year company veteran appointed as a coordinating lead author for the Seventh Assessment Report, and Dr Diego Armando Moya Pinta, whose IPCC affiliation is listed only as Imperial College London.
- The Guardian's investigation examined all 223 lead authors in IPCC working group III — which evaluates emissions-cutting policies and technologies — and identified 20 cases with strong conflict-of-interest concerns, more than half involving authors linked to Saudi institutions.
- The IPCC's conflict-of-interest committee reported finding no conflicts among any authors selected for the Seventh Assessment Report in March 2026, a conclusion the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty's Tzeporah Berman called 'clearly not fit for purpose' given the Aramco employees, vice-chair, and state-funded thinktank authors involved.
- KAPSARC (King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center), a Saudi government-funded thinktank chaired by the country's energy minister, has five authors in working group III — tying it with Imperial College London and Vienna's IIASA as the most represented institution.
- Dr Malak Al-Nory, a vice-chair of working group III who helps oversee the assessment process and evaluate authors' COI disclosures, is a senior adviser to the Saudi energy ministry and represented Saudi Arabia at the Bonn Climate Change Conference in June 2026.
- Saudi climate diplomacy has shifted from opposing emissions cuts toward advocating technological fixes like carbon capture at the IPCC, according to University of Geneva political scientist Kari De Pryck, who called this 'the first time we have so many Saudi-linked authors' in the body.
Why it matters: The IPCC's Seventh Assessment Report underpins UN climate negotiations and national policies through 2027. With working group III directly evaluating emissions-cutting options, the concentration of Saudi-linked authors and the COI committee's clearance of every author means the kingdom's pivot toward carbon-capture advocacy could be embedded into the global scientific consensus on phasing out fossil fuels.
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