BP’s largest terminal in Azerbaijan hit gas-flaring record in 2024

Thu 9 Jan 2025, London - BP’s largest terminal in Azerbaijan, Sangachal, flared record-breaking amounts of gas in 2024, according to a Global Witness investigation released today.

The findings follow previous analysis showing that the COP29 host nation was failing to report growing emissions from gas flaring and it appears that BP, which is Azerbaijan’s largest foreign investor, has been a significant player in this problem.

The oil firm has signed numerous pledges to reduce flaring, but Global Witness’ latest findings call into question BP’s commitment to reduce flaring from its operations by 2030.

In their most recent sustainability report BP said flaring from global operations increased 31% year-on-year, “primarily due to operational flaring issues in the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkiye region”.

Christopher Lambin, Senior Data Investigations Advisor at Global Witness, said:

"BP knew that the world’s eyes would be on Azerbaijan in 2024 as it hosted the world’s most important climate talks, COP29.

Yet in a flagrant show of disregard for climate action – and despite their promise to eliminate flaring by 2030 - BP flared record amounts of gas at their flagship Azerbaijani terminal last year. This scandalous level of flaring isn’t surprising when you consider BP invested billions in a new offshore platform there, which appears to have sent flaring soaring.

We can’t trust BP and the fossil fuel industry to stick to their own voluntary climate pledges. In 2025 we need to see these firms do the one thing we know will actually reduce flaring: rapidly transition away from fossil fuels.”

Sangachal, which BP operates and which is one of the world’s largest oil and gas terminals, is estimated to have flared 50.8 million cubic metres from January 2024 to September 2024. Within 9 months of 2024, the terminal had already recorded the highest annual flaring volume since records began in 2012.

The vast majority of flaring recorded at Sangachal occurred during March and April 2024 - with 16.4 and 24.3 million cubic meters of gas flared, respectively.

Soaring levels of flaring coincided with the on-lining of BP's ACE platform in the Caspian Sea, which cost $6 billion and which BP says is its most technologically advanced rig ever.

Contacts

Nadia Hasan
Communications Advisor
- [email protected]

Notes to editor:

A spokesperson for BP said:

“bp reports each year total hydrocarbons flared from our upstream operations globally. Over the past decade (2013-2023), the amount flared fell by almost 60%, and by almost 40% from 2019 to 2023.

“bp remains on track to achieve zero routine flaring by 2030, in line with both the World Bank’s Zero Routine Flaring Initiative and the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter, to which we are signatories. The amount flared, both overall and at any given asset, can vary from year to year.

“The operator of the Sangachal terminal monitors air quality around the terminal on a quarterly basis. Despite the highly industrialised nature of the area, over the period you reference (from 2019), this monitoring has not identified any exceedances of applicable air quality environmental standards…

“Over the past five years, air quality or health-related concerns have not been raised through the channels made available to community members.”

Methodology

• Global Witness analysed data provided by the Colorado School of Mines’ VIIRS Nightfire service for flare sites at Sangachal terminal, which BP operates. This data is based on Suomi NPP satellite imagery gathered by NASA/NOAA/US Defence Department, which uses infrared imaging to detect gas flaring

• We looked at the last decade of flaring data, organised into monthly data sets, and compared consolidated monthly and yearly flaring rates and volumes to determine long- and short-term trends

• Global Witness used open source and company reporting to determine BP’s upstream operational trends that may have influenced flaring rates at Sangachal and determined that two record high flaring months (March and April 2024) coincided with the on-lining of the ACE platform in the Caspian Sea Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli field (ACG). Oil from ACG comes ashore at Sangachal