United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged governments at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya on Tuesday to draw up clear plans for a future without fossil fuels, even as host country Turkey celebrated a new oil discovery.

Guterres told delegates that countries must move from talking about the energy transition to organising it, financing it and delivering it, with clear timelines for cutting fossil fuel use. He also criticised oil firms' large profits while families, businesses and governments suffer.

Oil profits under fire

Guterres did not name individual companies. Reuters reported that ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell have reported windfall earnings since the war between the United States and Iran began at the end of February. "Fossil fuels are not only driving the climate crisis. Dependence on them carries a steep economic and security price, as the crisis in the Middle East has laid bare," Guterres said.

Turkey's oil find and electrification push

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan struck a different note on Monday, hailing the discovery of two oilfields in the Gabar region potentially containing 135 million barrels of crude. Turkey is also pressing countries at the summit to sign a pledge to raise electricity's share of global energy use from about a fifth today to 35 percent by 2035, without requiring clean power.

The European Union, which co-hosted the first Electrification Forum at the summit on Tuesday, wants the target at the heart of the summit's conclusions but frames its own push as clean electrification.

Brazil, which hosted last year's summit, has published a roadmap asking countries to assess their energy systems by 2028 and then work together to reduce fossil fuel supply from 2031. The talks run until 20 November, and no major breakthrough on fossil fuels is expected. AFP and Reuters