The company produces oil and natural gas from onshore and offshore fields in the Azerbaijani segment of the Caspian Sea.

It owns fuel filling station networks under the SOCAR brand in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, Switzerland, and Austria.

[3] The company is run in an opaque manner, as it has complex webs of contracts and middlemen that have led to the enrichment of the country's ruling elites.

[11] In December 2005, the former head of the Baku Oil Refinery and a member of the Azerbaijani parliament, Rovnag Abdullayev, was appointed President of SOCAR.

Victor Menaldo writes that recently independent Azerbaijan found "itself in a fragile and desperate situation after a war against Armenia, a huge banking crisis, and an economic collapse" and that "the government was left with no other option than to rev up oil exploration and hasten the depletion of extant wells, despite the fact that oil discoveries had peaked.

[29][30] On 22 December 2023, after 30 years operating in the country’s oilfields, Norway based Equinor announced it was selling its assets in Azerbaijan to SOCAR.

[33] The pipelines deliver the ACG and Shah Deniz hydrocarbons from Sangachal Terminal located in 45 km south of Baku to Turkey and Europe.

[43] Two subsidiaries of Maire Tecnimont S.p.A signed two EPCs with Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery (HAOR) for its modernization and reconstruction in 2021.

[44] SOCAR and Axens signed licensing and design agreements for the FCC unit included in the HAOR modernisation project.

With this, engineers will be provided with schooling related to the units, as well as specifically aiming to develop energy efficiency skills and sustainability.

[45] The first fuel station of the company under the brand name SOCAR was opened in neighboring Georgia in 2008, before any in its home country.

[52][53] In 2021, plans were announced that Alpiq, EW Hofe and SOCAR Energy Switzerland will be building an electrolysis plant in the Freienbach district, which is to produce 1,000 to 1,200 tons of emission-free mobility green hydrogen a year.

[58] Azerigaz Production Union (PU) has been carrying out transportation, distribution and sale of natural gas in the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The Union has also been ensuring transportation of natural gas produced by SOCAR to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Georgia and the Russian Federation.

The opening ceremony of Star Oil Refinery was held on 19 October in İzmir, Turkey with the participation of Ilham Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Back in April of the same year, Azerbaijan had signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in order to cooperate on offshore wind development.

Now the company has offices in London, Frankfurt, Geneva, Vienna, Bucharest, Istanbul, Kyiv, Tbilisi, Astana and Tehran.

[71] On 4 December 2015, three workers of SOCAR were reported missing after part of the living quarters at Oil Rocks fell into the sea due to a heavy storm.

"[76] SOCAR is considered "well-connected" in Germany and plays a role in the wake of revelations about lobbying and corruption in connection with the Azerbaijani laundromat.

The state-owned company supports, among other things, annual symposia organized by the Azerbaijani Embassy in Berlin and the German-Azerbaijani Forum association (DAF).

[79][80][81] According to a confidential ethics report, in 2013 SOCAR secretly funded a trip to a conference in Baku for 10 U.S. members of Congress and 32 of their staff.

The congressmen and their staff had their travel expenses and luxury gifts paid for by SOCAR worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[82][83] In 2017, it became known that SOCAR had made illegal payments totaling 28,000 euros to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany district association in Frankfurt in 2012.

[85][86] Two SOCAR subsidiaries embezzled $1.7 billion as part of a contract with BP to expand its operations in the Shah Deniz gas field.

[87] SOCAR is also part of corruption revelations that led to the murder of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in October 2017.

[76][91] In April 2021, a Swiss court dismissed a lawsuit by SOCAR, in which Azerbaijan's state-owned company sought to prevent the disclosure of bank information to Latvian police.

Latvia is investigating suspicious payments of about 28 million euros by Azerbaijani-controlled shell companies linked to an agreement between the Maltese government and SOCAR.

[94][95][76][91] Since 2012, SOCAR has sought to avoid U.S. sanctions aimed at Iran, its partner in a 28 billion dollar Caspian Sea natural gas project.

It used two Houston based non-profit organizations, the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan (AFAZ) and the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians, both run by Kemal Oksuz, as conduits.

[100][101] SOCAR became the title sponsor and official partner for the 2019 Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix event held in Baku.