Arab officials met in Doha for a conference on regional energy cooperation as they strongly opposed efforts to phase out fossil fuels at COP28. Kuwait’s oil minister dismissed the proposal as an “aggressive attack” by Western nations and labelled it as “racist and colonial”. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, led opposition to the move away from hydrocarbons at the UN climate summit. Officials from Iraq and Bahrain also emphasized the importance of fossil fuels in their economies and called for a balanced approach to their use while advocating for emissions reductions and the further use of renewable energy.