News worth knowing – March 7, 2025 – Relations between Israel and Azerbaijan are very close and getting closer. Currently it is also based on working together against the major threat from Iran, Azerbaijan’s southern neighbor, a threat posed to the United States as well.
According to GLOBES: Azerbaijan’s SOCAR set to sign Israel gas exploration agreement.
In a historically strategic move, Azerbaijan State Oil Company (SOCAR) is teams up with British Petroleum (BP) and Israel Yitzhak Tshuva’s NewMed Energy (TASE: NWMD), with NewMed Energy CEO Yossi Abu, a major player behind SOCAR’s expansion of its activities in Israel, to search for gas in Block I in the northwest of Israel’s economic area waters.
First SOCAR Drilling Outside of Azerbaijan
This will be SOCAR’s first drilling operations outside of Azerbaijan. The parties will sign a work plan with Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure in a fortnight, after delays due to the war that broke out between Israel and Hamas after the October 7, 2023 vicious attack on Israeli communities.
SOCAR’s latest move comes after Israeli businessman Aaron Frenkel’s huge deal early 2025 in which he agreed to sell half of his 10% stake in the Tamar gas field to the Azerbaijani energy company.
Since SOCAR is an important energy supplier for Turkey and Israel alike, expanding gas exploration in Israel’s economic waters is a dramatic geopolitical regional move. SOCAR is the largest foreign investor in Turkey, with $18.5 billion investments in the last 17 years, while SOCAR’s subsidiary in Turkey employs more than 10,000 people.
Azerbaijan is a significant energy supplier for Israel. With Israel being Azerbaijan’s sixth largest oil export market, in 2024 it generated a total revenue of $14.4 billion for Baku.
Ankara’s energy dependence on SOCAR and the need not to disrupt relations with Azerbaijan is an interesting angle to this historical deal. Azerbaijan’s oil supply to Israel passes through Turkey. Despite Turkey’s trade embargo on Israel, the Erdogan administration chose not to halt Azerbaijan’s oil destined to Haifa Port, Israel.
The significant meaning of the gas exploration’s partnership between Azerbaijan and the Israeli Ministry of Energy poses wider consequences. SOCAR will operate in Block I, located on Israel’s maritime borders with Lebanon and Cyprus, while Turkey does not recognize the economic waters’ boundaries as established by international law. Rather, Ankara is the only country in the world that recognizes the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) and therefore believes that it deserves economic waters. With the expansion of Azerbaijani SOCAR’s activities in the region, it is very difficult to see a situation in which the Cyprian-Turks would express opposition and try to thwart the move.
To strengthen its power Azerbaijan seeks to transport its gas to Mersin, southeastern Turkey, and from there to the European market via a pipeline that already exists and is active in Turkey. This is therefore another of Azerbaijan’s strategic moves when entering the gas exploration consortium with NewMed and BP in Israel’s maritime Block I.
Furthermore, a senior energy industry official told “Globes” that there is potential for establishing a project that would connect several countries – Jordan, Syria, Lebanon – via gas pipelines, at an estimated $200 million cost.
Subsequently, Israel, would earn greater income from its gas sales while Turkey’s economic dependence on it; Jordan would earn royalties from the gas pipeline transport across its territory; Syria, with a new regime that is trying to get closer to the West, would be able to both use the imported gas to its advantage and hopefully rebuild relations with Israel.
