...The first allegation to which you refer is that ”gas flaring in Azerbaijan hit a decade high in 2023 and has increased by 10.5% since 2018 at oil and gas facilities operated or owned by bp and SOCAR”. Our response to this is that, as far as we can tell, Urgewald are here reporting data for the whole of Azerbaijan, conflating data for the operations of the Azerbaijan state oil company (SOCAR) and for bp’s operations. We aren’t in a position to comment on such data, its accuracy or its relevance to bp’s operations.

The second allegation is the contrast Urgewald seek to draw between these data and what it describes as “bp's pledges to eliminate the practice from its oil and gas production by 2030”. In addition to the problems noted above, we would note that this assertion confuses two very different activities – flaring and routine flaring.

There are many reasons why flaring which is not “routine flaring” might need to occur in oil and gas operations, such as for safety reasons in response to a process upset. We assume that such flaring is included in the figures given by Urgewald – so those figures should not be compared to or contrasted with the fact that bp aims 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 a signatory.