World’s greenest countries eye drilling as fix for Iran crisis

BRUSSELS — Dozens of countries leading the global charge to go green are gathered in Colombia this week to champion moves to ditch fossil fuels.  

Yet even as they do, many of the same countries are struggling to resist the siren song of high-polluting oil and gas sitting dormant under their soils and seas. 

Growing geopolitical instability — and above all the ongoing war in Iran — has spooked governments into searching for alternatives to fossil fuel imports, in the hopes of insulating their economies from external crises. 

For most, that means doubling down on the transition to clean energy like solar and wind. But in countries endowed with fossil fuel resources, some leaders and lawmakers are also advocating for more drilling. 

This means things could get awkward at the first global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, a six-day get-together now underway in Colombia’s port town of Santa Marta. 

Denmark, for example, is considering extending oil and gas licenses. Germany wants to step up gas production. So does the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the British government is under pressure to approve further drilling in the North Sea.

“Europe must stand on its own two feet,” said Morten Bødskov, Denmark's industry minister, when announcing the possibility of more licences. “This requires that we invest massively in our own energy capacity. First and foremost in green solutions. But also in the supply that keeps production running, while we strengthen the expansion of green, stable energy.”

Such discussions show the energy transition “is a difficult thing even for front-runner countries,” said Beth Walker, senior policy adviser at the think tank E3G.

And it isn’t a quandary only for European governments. 

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, a former climate scientist, has lifted her opposition to hydraulic fracturing, a controversial gas extraction technology known as fracking, to reduce her country’s reliance on U.S. imports. 

“For many years, I myself said no to fracking. But when I look at new technologies and the country’s situation in terms of energy dependence, the worst we can do is simply say no,” Sheinbaum said last week.  

All those countries are still pushing to accelerate their transition toward clean energy. Domestic drilling, they insist, is just a temporary fix to deal with an acute crisis. 

Critics, however, warn that digging up more fossil fuels will do nothing to bring down short-term energy prices, but will increase greenhouse gas pollution and therefore global temperatures in the long run. 

“This is the moment for countries serious about the climate crisis to come together and break from fossil fuels,” said Tessa Khan, executive director at the nonprofit Uplift.  

“Bluntly, we already have far more oil and gas than is safe to burn. Some must stay in the ground.”  

Tricky transition  

The International Energy Agency issued a similar call five years ago, warning that no new oil and gas fields should be approved if the world wanted to hit the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

Countries did not heed the warning. At least 180 new gas and oil fields were approved between 2021 and 2025, not counting expansions or methods like fracking, said Scott Zimmerman, who tracks oil and gas projects for the Global Energy Monitor. 

When ministers and envoys from around 50 nations arrive for high-level discussions at the conference tomorrow, they will be greeted with a fresh call from scientists to halt “all new fossil fuel expansion,” according to a preliminary report circulated to governments. 

That's a tough sell for the major fossil fuel producers attending, such as Canada and Angola. (The biggest polluters — China, India and the U.S. — won't be there.)

And even the summit’s apparently climate-ambitious co-hosts are unlikely to endorse the call. 

The new centrist coalition government in the Netherlands, which is heading up the conference with Colombia, has ruled out reopening the Groningen field, Europe’s largest natural gas reserve, and will not grant further licenses in the Wadden Sea biodiversity hotspot — but, together with its neighbor Germany, is forging ahead with other projects in the North Sea.  

“We agreed once again to accelerate the ramping up of gas extraction in the North Sea,” said Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten, a former climate minister, last month after meeting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.  

The Dutch climate ministry sees no contradiction. “The Netherlands is fully committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels,” a spokesperson said, citing the high share of renewables in the country’s energy mix. 

“Yet we acknowledge the transition is complex and long,” he added. “The reality is that we still need fossil fuels because there are not yet enough sustainable alternatives. But we need to do more collectively to phase them out. And we need to organize ourselves better at scale — in line with the scale of the challenge. That is what the conference in Colombia is about.”  

Frack, baby, frack  

In Germany, this month's package to tackle rising energy costs driven by the Iran war included a coalition deal for “the development of selected domestic gas reserves,” alongside expanding renewable sources.  

Bavarian Premier Markus Söder said: “The next step would be fracking.” The German energy ministry is also looking into that technology, banned in the country for almost a decade. A spokesperson insisted that there were no concrete plans for the time being. 

“Minister [Katherina] Reiche pointed out that Germany must keep all realistic options on the table when it comes to its energy supply,” the spokesperson said. They stressed Germany is committed to its climate goals and the Paris Agreement. 

Other countries are pushing ahead with fracking to boost their energy security, according to analytics firm WoodMackenzie. This includes Mexico, where President Sheinbaum this month unveiled a program to boost energy efficiency, scale up renewables and increase domestic gas production — including, potentially, fracking. 

Aside from climate concerns, fracking brings the risk of side-effects such as water pollution — the reason why Sheinbaum herself long opposed the technology.  

Now, though, she has pushed those worries aside to reduce Mexico’s dependence on imports from the U.S., which supplies three-quarters of the country’s gas, and tasked experts with producing a report on the feasibility and sustainability of fracking projects. 

Greece this month moved toward approving its first offshore exploration in nearly 40 years. The French Senate earlier this year approved a proposal to allow oil and gas drilling in overseas territories to improve security of supply — going against the government’s wishes and a decade-old law ending exploration. Some lawmakers are now pushing to extend oil production in mainland France. 

Even Denmark, which has some of the world’s most ambitious climate targets, is considering extending production licenses in its North Sea fields.  

“I would have preferred that Europe could make do with green energy,” said Danish Climate Minister Lars Aagaard in late February. “But the reality is different, and I fundamentally believe that it is better for Europe to get gas from Denmark than from countries outside our continent."

His office declined to comment further, citing ongoing negotiations to form a new government. 

British battles 

In the U.K., meanwhile, the Iran war has revitalized a noisy political clash over whether to encourage drilling for fossil fuels in its sector of the North Sea.  

Keir Starmer’s government came to power in 2024 promising a ban on new oil and gas exploration licenses. But Starmer routinely takes flak from U.S. President Donald Trump for refusing to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.” The opposition Conservatives and right-wing Reform UK, which is leading in the polls, is pressuring Labour to U-turn.  

Starmer has mostly held the line. Last year, his government greenlit so-called “tieback” projects, allowing North Sea operators to produce more oil and gas in areas connected to existing fields.  

A decision on whether to allow work on two major oil and gas projects, Rosebank and Jackdaw, expected in the next two months, will fall to U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.

That decision, to be made by a politician who is also a longstanding climate advocate, is seen as a key test for whether government action matches its green rhetoric. 

The government “faces a choice,” says Uplift's Khan: “Cave in to the ‘drill, baby, drill’ demands of Trump, a man who thinks climate change is a ‘con job,’ or follow the science, which is clear that no new North Sea fields are compatible with safe climate limits.”  

Countries flock to Santa Marta to the backdrop of a similar debate in Colombia, where right-wing opposition politicians are seeking to overturn the current government’s ban on new oil drilling projects in the Amazon.  

“There's more countries sort of wobbling or hesitating than they are pulling back” from the transition, U.K. Climate Envoy Rachel Kyte insisted at an event this week, ahead of representing the country at the summit.

“You can't drill yourself out of a system that's totally volatile,” said E3G’s Walker.  

“But the transition away from fossil fuels is a politically difficult thing to do … and so for countries to be coming together in Santa Marta to share experiences, even when they're still having these debates at home, is a very positive sign — a sign that people realize this is the way we need to go.”