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Chris Garrard, from the humanities marketing campaign group Tradition Unstained, informed openDemocracy that media sponsorship preparations comparable to BP’s “legitimise” fossil gasoline corporations as they proceed to put money into new oil and gasoline infrastructure, reasonably than making an attempt to fulfill net-zero objectives.
Given the Azerbaijani regime’s observe report of human rights abuses, the BBC movie’s “constructive cultural perspective on Azerbaijan” labored to “BP’s benefit”, Garrard mentioned.
The movie additionally implicitly promoted Azerbaijan’s claims to Shusha, a metropolis within the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh that Azerbaijan seized from Armenian forces within the Second Karabakh Struggle in 2020. Azerbaijan now desires to show the area right into a ‘inexperienced power zone’ – with BP’s assist.
Underneath its so-called ‘contract of the century’, BP is the biggest overseas company investor in resource-rich Azerbaijan.
It has lengthy confronted criticism from human rights and local weather activists for its ties to the ruling Aliyev regime, which has been accused of “electoral fraud”, the silencing of dissenting voices and benefiting disproportionately from Azerbaijan’s oil and gasoline wealth.
“BP must preserve the [Azerbaijani] authorities onside and this [film] is a low-cost means of doing it,” mentioned campaigner James Marriott, co-author of Crude Britannia: How Oil Formed a Nation.
BP informed openDemocracy it goals to work for the “efficient and accountable” growth of the Caspian Sea’s power assets for the advantage of Azerbaijan and the corporate.
It added that it has a internet zero ambition and is working to decarbonise operations and develop renewable power in Azerbaijan.
“We don’t help people or political teams in any nation,” a BP spokesperson informed openDemocracy.
A BBC spokesperson mentioned: “Internet hosting promoting and sponsorship exterior of the UK, which is clearly labelled as such and is totally separate to our editorial output, permits us to put money into the BBC’s world-class journalism, which supplies impartial and neutral information throughout all matters, together with local weather change, the power disaster and geopolitics.”
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