MOL Group to operate oil project onshore Azerbaijan

The operator, in a release Dec. 17, said the fully termed agreement capitalizes on an alignment reached in June 2025 on key terms for joint hydrocarbon exploration in the region.

Dec. 17, 2025

2 min read

In June 2025, SOCAR and MOL signed an agreement to evaluate further potential hydrocarbon exploration opportunities in Azerbaijan. The agreement was signed by MOL Group chairman and CEO Zsolt Hernádi and SOCAR president Rovshan Najaf.

Hungary’s MOL Group and State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) have signed an exploration, development and production sharing agreement for an onshore area in the Shamakhi-Gobustan region of Azerbaijan.

MOL Group will serve as operator in the joint exploration project with 65% interest. SOCAR holds the remaining 35%.

The operator, in a release Dec. 17, said the fully termed agreement capitalizes on an alignment reached in June 2025 on key terms for joint hydrocarbon exploration in the region.

As part of a planned exploration project, a seismic survey is scheduled to begin in early 2026, followed by exploration drilling at an unspecified ‘later’ stage, the company said.

MOL Group entered Azerbaijan in 2020 through acquisition from Chevron Corp. of a 9.57% stake in Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) oil field, and an effective 8.9% stake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that transports the crude to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

ACG represents 14% of MOL's total production and 25% of total reserves as of 2024.

The BTC pipeline plays an important role in MOL's supply of oil to MOL Group's refineries in Central and Eastern Europe. So far, almost 18 million bbl of MOL’s crude oil has been transported from ACG field through the BTC pipeline and cargo ships to MOL Group’s refineries, including subsidiary Slovnaft’s 6.1-million tonne/year (tpy) integrated refining and petrochemical complex in Bratislava, Slovakia, and INA’s 90,000-b/d Rijeka refinery on the Urinj Peninsula.