The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) (Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan Respublikası Dövlət Neft Şirkəti) is a wholly state-owned national oil company headquartered in Baku, Azerbaijan. It is one of the largest fossil fuel corporations in the world. The company produces oil and natural gas from onshore and offshore fields in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea. It operates the country's two oil refineries, one gas processing plant and runs several oil and gas export pipelines throughout the country. It owns fuel filling stations under the SOCAR brand in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Romania and Switzerland. The company has about 61,000 employees.
Azneft, a business that integrated the Azerbaijani oil industry was created after the Bolshevik Revolution through the nationalization of the Azerbaijani oil industry. It was subordinate to different organizations in the former Soviet Union and the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, depending on its organizations' characteristics at different times and was known as Azerneftkomite, Azerneftkombinat (later divided into the Azerneft, Azerneftzavodlar and Azerneftmashingayirma syndicates), and Azerneftchikharma syndicates, and so forth. In 1954-1959, the Ministry of the Oil Industry of the Azerbaijan SSR and in 1965-1970, the Ministry of Oil Production Industry of the Azerbaijan SSR were established on the basis of Azerneft. In August 1970, it was renamed back to Azerneft.