BP’s fossil fuel projects in Azerbaijan have helped fund the military aggression against Karabakh Armenians though the transfer to billions of dollars to the Azerbaijan government since 2020, a campaign group has claimed, The Guardian reports.
Global Witness said Azerbaijan’s share of two large oil and gas projects operated by the British oil company had earned its government more than four times its military spending since 2020, the year Azerbaijan unleashed war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Analysis by the NGO suggested that Azerbaijan’s economic reliance on BP, its largest foreign investor, had indirectly helped to fund Azerbaijan’s military aggression against Armenians in the region, which has forced more than 100,000 people to flee the territory since early September.
In the same month senior figures representing BP, including its chair, Helge Lund, and former chief executive John Browne, visited Baku to attend the 100th birthday celebrations of Azerbaijan’s late former president Heydar Aliyev and reiterate its commitment “to long-term partnership with Azerbaijan,” according to a company statement.
According to The Guardian, BP has supplied Baku with oil and gas worth almost $35bn (£28.6bn) since 2020 under a “production-sharing agreement”.
