Azerbaijan's Minister of Industry and Energy. The Azerbaijan government adopted for a strategy in the 1990s to rev up oil exploration and deplete existing oil wells, with immediate economic gains. 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." Menaldo wrote in 2016, "the days in which the Azerbaijani state can offset its underlying weakness by drilling its way out of trouble are numbered... Whether Azerbaijan can now transition to a more diversified economy is an open question." Thomas de Waal wrote in 2018, "Azerbaijan’s economy showed classic symptoms of “Dutch Disease,” the condition whereby heavy reliance on the export of one product—usually oil or gas—weakens the rest of the economy." According to De Waal, the oil wealth had enriched political and economic elites in Azerbaijan, along with underspending of the oil riches on long-term development. Operations Upstream operations SOCAR's activities are exploration, preparation, exploitation of onshore and offshore oil and gas fields, transportation, processing, refining and sale of oil, gas, condensate and other related products. SOCAR's exploration activities cover the prospective offshore fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea. The current largest fields being explored are Shafag-Asiman, which is explored with BP, and Absheron natural gas fields which is being explored together with BP and TotalEnergies respectively. In 2010, SOCAR and BP signed a new production sharing agreement regarding Shafag-Asiman. In 2014, SOCAR and BP signed a joint exploration and development over the Shallow Water Absheron Peninsula. SOCAR has explored the Umid and Bulla Deniz gas fields. In 2017, SOCAR and a consortium led by BP signed a letter of intent for future development of the Azer-Chirag-Gunashli field. They signed a $6 billion contract regarding the Azeri Central East (ACE) platform on the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli field. In 2016, SOCAR produced of gas. Azerbaijan has 57 oil fields, 18 of which are offshore, in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea. The essential part of the company's revenue comes from the giant ACG oil field complex and Shah Deniz gas field. In September 1994, SOCAR entered into a Production sharing agreement (PSA) with the foreign oil companies led by