Source: Climate Forward: Tackling climate change in the birthplace of oil
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It remains to be seen whether Babayev, a former low-ranking executive who is now Azerbaijan’s environment minister, will have the same impact. But there is also a poignant historical resonance to COP29: By some measures, Azerbaijan is where the modern oil industry began.
Oil ‘bubbled up from the ground’
Oil has been used in Azerbaijan for thousands of years, as lamp fuel and medicine. Historians believe this 13th century account from the explorer Marco Polo refers to Baku:
“Near the Georgian border there is a spring from which gushes a stream of oil in such abundance that a hundred ships may load there at once. This oil is not good to eat; but it is good for burning and as a salve for men and camels affected with itch or scab.”
“Azerbaijan was known for this oil that bubbled up just out of the ground by itself,” said Steve LeVine, the author of a book about the oil in the Caspian Sea region who writes an energy newsletter for The Information.
In the 19th century, Azerbaijan was the site of multiple innovations that gave rise to the modern oil industry, including one of the first mechanically drilled oil wells and the first oil tanker.
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