Energy
SOCAR Completes Africa Entry With 10% Stake in Cote d'Ivoire's Baleine
4
Min
Eni has completed the sale of a 10% participating interest in the Baleine offshore oil and gas project in Cote d'Ivoire to SOCAR, giving Azerbaijan's state oil company its first producing upstream asset in Africa.
The Italian major announced completion on 16 September, closing a sale-and-purchase agreement first announced in January. No transaction value was disclosed.
The new ownership structure
Eni confirmed the post-completion split. "Once the deal is finalized, the participating interests in the Baleine project will be distributed as follows: Eni – 37.25%, Vitol – 30%, SOCAR – 10%, and Petroci – 22.75%," the company said in a statement reported by Azernews. Eni remains operator. Petroci is Cote d'Ivoire's national oil company.
What SOCAR is buying into
Baleine is currently producing more than 57,000 barrels of oil per day and over 78 million cubic feet of gas per day across its first two phases. A third phase targets 150,000 barrels per day and 200 million cubic feet of gas per day.
The field was discovered in 2021 and delivered first production in 2023 — an unusually fast cycle, and one Eni has promoted as Africa's first net-zero upstream development. It was also Cote d'Ivoire's first major oil discovery in two decades.
Analysts at GlobalData, cited by Offshore Technology, estimate the field has recovered just 0.26% of expected reserves to date, project peak output in 2030, and expect production to continue to 2059. Those are analyst estimates rather than company disclosures. The same analysis puts Baleine at roughly 8% of Cote d'Ivoire's daily oil production.
Eni's dual exploration model
For Eni the divestment is standard practice rather than a retreat. The company runs what it calls a dual exploration model: find, develop quickly, then sell down equity to accelerate monetisation while retaining operatorship.
Its Ivorian position remains substantial. Eni holds 90% and operates the Calao and Calao South discoveries, which the company describes as "the largest discoveries in the country since Baleine." Eni has been present in Cote d'Ivoire since 2015.
Why it matters for Baku
SOCAR framed the acquisition as its entry into African oil and gas production and part of a long-term strategy to widen its global exploration and production footprint.
The purchase continues an unusually active internationalisation run. SOCAR has taken positions in Israel's Tamar field, expanded in Uzbekistan, and moved into US shale through the Comstock transaction. Baleine adds a producing African asset and seats SOCAR alongside Vitol in a partnership — relevant given the Azerbaijani company's growing trading arm.
The strategic logic is diversification away from a Caspian production base facing mature-field decline. Whether a 10% non-operated stake materially changes SOCAR's earnings mix is a separate question: at current Baleine output, the interest represents roughly 5,700 barrels per day net.
