By acquiring a 1.16% interest from Malaysia's Petronas, British oil firm BP wants to boost its holding in the Shah Deniz gas project in Azerbaijan to 29.99%.

BP said that it has purchased the interest from Petronas for $168 million, based on the same commercial conditions as Petronas' earlier announcement of the Shah Deniz transaction.

Since 2006, the BP-led consortium constructing the Shah Deniz project started producing gas from the enormous offshore field's first phase, supplying over 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year to Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. The second phase began production in 2018, increasing 16 billion cubic meters of gas production capacity to the overall capacity of 26 billion cubic meters.

Azerbaijan began selling commercial natural gas to Europe with its $40 billion Southern Gas Route in December 2020, when the last section of the corridor, the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), went online. Europe is a very profitable new market for Azerbaijan, as the continent seeks to diversify its gas supply away from Russia, on which it currently relies for 34% of its gas.

Azerbaijan wants to provide 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year to the European market, with 8 billion cubic meters going to Italy and a combined 2 billion cubic meters going to Greece and Bulgaria. This year, the nation expects to sell 5 billion cubic meters to Europe and nearly 12 billion cubic meters to Turkey.

Shah Deniz sent 7.833 billion cubic meters to Turkey for $1.2 billion in the first nine months of 2021, 2.262 billion cubic meters to Georgia for $282 million, and 4.663 billion cubic meters to Europe for $1.5 billion.

The Shah Deniz consortium also includes Turkey's TPAO, Russia's Lukoil, Iran's NICO, and SGC Upstream, in addition to BP and Azerbaijan's national energy giant SOCAR.