Azerbaijan says 'God-given' oil and gas will help it go green

Flames soar into the air from a sandstone outcrop on a hillside on the Absheron peninsula near Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, as it prepares to host the COP29 climate conference next week.

The "burning mountain" — Yanardag in Azerbaijani — is fed by underground gas rising to the surface and igniting upon contact with oxygen.

The abundance of naturally occurring fires from the energy-rich nation's huge gas deposits has earned it the nickname "The Land of Fire".

Azerbaijan's vast oil and gas resources "have shaped the history, culture, politics and the economy" of the Caspian nation, said energy expert Kamalya Mustafayeva.

Its oil deposits — seven billion barrels of proven reserves — were discovered in the mid-19th century, making what was then part of the Russian Empire one of the first places in the world to start commercial oil production.

"The world's first industrial onshore oil well was drilled in Azerbaijan, and also the first offshore one," Ashraf Shikhaliyev, the director of the energy ministry's international cooperation department, told AFP.

 'Born of an oil boom' 

Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Azerbaijan has produced 1.05 billion tonnes of oil and is set to increase its natural gas production by more than a third in the next decade.

Revenues from oil and gas production make up about 35 percent of the country's GDP and nearly half of the state budget.

"Azerbaijan's oil revenues — up to $200 billion to date since 1991 — gave the country an opportunity to make a huge leap forward," said Sabit Bagirov, who headed the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (Socar) in the 1990s.

Energy expert Ilham Shaban said "Baku, once a small fishermen's hamlet of...