The oil behind the ethnic cleansing

Since 2020, Azerbaijan has pocketed over $35 billion in oil and gas profits. That money did not just fund roads or schools but fueled war—literally. In 2023, Azerbaijan used Israeli drones, Turkish weapons and Western-backed firepower to force more than 120,000 Armenians out of Artsakh, a place Armenians had called home for generations. The world watched in silence. Then, as always, it moved on. But here is what we cannot ignore: fossil fuel money made it all possible.

For decades, energy giants like BP and Chevron have poured billions into Azerbaijan through joint ventures with SOCAR, its state oil company. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) alone has been central to this flow, marketed as an economic win while quietly reinforcing authoritarian power.

That power has been building for years. In 2023 alone, Azerbaijan spent over $3.56 billion on its military: a staggering jump from just over $2.9 billion the year before and part of a three-decade trend of surging militarization funded by oil and gas profits. 

These are not just numbers in a budget—they are the dollars that purchased the drones that bombed Artsakh, trained soldiers who would enforce a nine-month blockade that starved its entire population and built the authoritarian infrastructure to censor dissent, rewrite maps and erase Armenian history.

Let us name names. BP is Azerbaijan’s largest foreign investor and Chevron held a major stake in the country’s oil fields until 2020. Their combined investments enabled SOCAR to expand and thrive under the authoritarian Aliyev regime. Both companies proudly highlight their “corporate social responsibility” programs in Azerbaijan, like funding youth soccer, vocational schools and the occasional infrastructure project, while deliberately ignoring the regime’s suppression of free speech and its persecution of journalists, human rights defenders and ethnic Armenians.

Other big oil companies involved include ExxonMobil, Inpex, Equinor (formerly Statoil), Turkiye Petrolleri, ITOCHU and ONGC Videsh. Their partnerships with SOCAR provide the regime money and international legitimacy. On the buyer side, major energy firms like Italy’s Eni, France’s TotalEnergies and India’s IOC import Azerbaijani oil—most of it, flowing through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. By doing business with Azerbaijan, these companies help sustain an authoritarian government under the cover of energy cooperation.

These CSR efforts are not philanthropic. They are strategic branding exercises used as tools to sanitize partnerships with authoritarian states while propping up dictatorships in exchange for pipeline access. In reality, these programs are often coordinated with the Azerbaijani government, allowing companies to gain favor and stability while sidestepping any demand for democratic reform or minority rights protections. The result: a fossil-fueled ethnic cleansing. 

In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a final assault on the remaining Armenian population of Artsakh. Within days, the region was emptied. Over 120,000 Armenians fled under fire, without food, medicine or international protection.

Azerbaijan did not stop there. It is now applying a new layer of erasure through ideology. State‑backed NGOs now claim sovereign Armenian territory as “Western Azerbaijan,” rewriting maps and broadcasting narratives that dehumanize Armenians and justify further expansion. 

Then came COP29, the global climate summit hosted by Azerbaijan in late 2024—a stage the regime used to greenwash its image while keeping oil and gas production at full speed. It unveiled flashy renewable energy projects, many built on depopulated Armenian land in Artsakh, now off-limits to those displaced. Over 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists flooded the summit, dwarfing national delegations. Civil society was sidelined, activists and journalists were harassed and meaningful participation was stifled. Delegates eventually pledged $300 billion for poorer countries, but only after days of gridlock, and the amount fell far short of what is needed to address the climate crisis. 

Although the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) led a coalition effort to call out Azerbaijan’s greenwashing and demand that COP29 address the ethnic cleansing of Armenians, summit leaders ignored the warnings. 

Greta Thunberg, barred from attending due to Azerbaijan’s closed borders, protested nearby in Georgia and Armenia. She called it “absolutely nauseating” that the Aliyev regime was allowed to host a climate summit while committing human rights abuses, including the forced displacement of Armenians. Alongside local activists, she publicly condemned Azerbaijan’s environmental destruction, repression and use of climate diplomacy as a smokescreen for authoritarianism. 

Azerbaijan is using climate diplomacy to rebrand its authoritarianism. Its push into green energy is a geopolitical hedge—meant to attract Western investment, deflect criticism and expand leverage without cutting dependence on oil and gas. These renewables are not a transition but an accessory: the brochures show solar panels, but behind the scenes, pipelines and repression remain intact. 

So, what now?

The U.S. must condition all aid, trade and partnerships with Azerbaijan on human rights benchmarks, including the right of displaced Armenians to return to their homeland and full accountability for the 2023 ethnic cleansing. This is not just a moral imperative—it is a legal one. 

As a recent bipartisan letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio makes clear, the U.S. must uphold international law and “actively engage with international partners and multilateral institutions to facilitate the return of Armenians to Nagorno Karabakh.” That means confronting Azerbaijan’s deliberate erasure campaign and rejecting any reconstruction efforts that benefit from displacement.

One path forward is right in front of us: Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. Originally passed to restrict U.S. aid to Azerbaijan unless it ended blockades and aggression toward Armenia and Artsakh, this measure has been consistently waived—except for a brief period by the Biden administration following the Artsakh ethnic cleansing—since 2002. But Azerbaijan has repeatedly violated every condition for that waiver, arming for war, shelling civilians and even incorporating terrorist elements into its military operations. Renewing Section 907 is not about punishment; it is about restoring U.S. credibility and enforcing a basic standard: no aid to aggressors.

Countries buying Azerbaijani oil—Italy, Israel, India—have no excuse. Italy, Azerbaijan’s largest export market, takes nearly 16 percent of its total oil imports from Azerbaijan, making it by far its biggest European buyer. Israel relies on Azerbaijan for approximately 40 percent of its crude oil, primarily via the BTC pipeline. India, the third-largest buyer, imported around $733 million worth of Azerbaijani oil in 2024, about 7-8 percent of its total crude imports. 

Each has diverse supply networks and would face little to no increase in cost by sourcing from elsewhere. In fact, alternative suppliers like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kazakhstan and even Russia offer similar oil at comparable prices. The choice to continue buying from Azerbaijan is not about energy security—it is moral negligence.

Here is the truth: Every dollar flowing into Azerbaijan’s fossil economy underwrites a regime that wages war, silences dissent and erases a people. If governments and companies continue to look away, they are not just complicit—they are collaborators.

We cannot allow gas to greenwash genocide. It is time for accountability. It is time to divest. It is time to act.