Azerbaijan’s state-run oil company (SOCAR) and ExxonMobil have signed their second memorandum of understanding in two months as part of President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Washington for historic peace talks with President Donald Trump and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The Washington signing was attended by Aliyev and Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, and was signed by SOCAR’s Rovshan Najaf and John Ardill, the Vice President of ExxonMobil.
According to a statement published on Aliyev’s website, the agreement was signed before a one-on-one meeting between Witkoff and Aliyev.
This was the second memorandum of understanding to be signed by SOCAR and ExxonMobil in 2025, the first being signed in early June during Ardill’s visit to Baku.
At the time, Ardill met with Aliyev, with whom he discussed ‘ExxonMobil’s long-standing presence in Azerbaijan, including its participation as a shareholder in the Azeri–Chirag–Guneshli (ACG) project’, which accounts for a majority of Azerbaijan’s petroleum exports.
According to a statement published by the president’s website about the meeting in June, the document ‘focused on developing Azerbaijan’s oil and gas potential’.
ExxonMobil holds a 6.79% stake in the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and is also a partner in the ACG complex, which transports its output through the BTC.
SOCAR’s Najaf and Jabbarov additionally met with Stephanie Bednarek, the Vice President of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Dan Negrea, a senior adviser and to the president and chair of the US Export–Import Bank.
This latest document was signed during Aliyev’s visit to Washington to meet with Trump and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for historic peace talks later the same day.
🇦🇿🇺🇸 Within the framework of the working visit of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Mr. Ilham Aliyev (@presidentaz), to the United States, together with President of SOCAR Rovshan Najaf (@RovshanNajaf), we met with a delegation led by Dan Negrea (@DanNegreaUSA), Senior… pic.twitter.com/KMnVxrECJG
— Mikayil Jabbarov (@MikayilJabbarov) August 8, 2025
On Tuesday, Jabbarov met with the US Embassy’s Chargé d’Affaires Emily Carlon in Baku to discuss economic, trade, energy, investment, and transport cooperation between their countries.
A statement on the meeting issued by the Economy Ministry said that they additionally discussed Azerbaijan’s position as a ‘reliable energy partner’ and the prospects of the Middle Corridor, a commonly used term for a route connecting Asia to Europe.
Nate Ostiller
