Azerbaijan is one of the British company’s key targets as it seeks to build up businesses outside the United States, where its operations have been under pressure in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.

The 50-50 joint venture with the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan, or SOCAR, gives BP access to unexplored waters in the Shafag-Asiman field. SOCAR estimates the field has gas reserves of 17,000 billion cubic feet.

That would put the field, which lies 125 km southeast of the capital of Baku, on par with the country’s current largest natural gas field, Shah Deniz, which pumped about 700 million cubic feet of gas and 42,700 barrels of gas condensate a day in the first half of the year. BP has a 25 percent stake in that prospect.

“This is an important day for Azerbaijan and BP as it marks the beginning of our bilateral cooperation in exploration and development of a new offshore block,” Dudley said at an event in Baku. “With SOCAR and our partners BP has helped to establish Azerbaijan as a world scale oil and gas producer, and I believe the significant remaining potential will continue to make it relevant for decades to come.” BP did not disclose financial terms of the contract, which will last for 30 years. It will be the operator of the project, searching for gas in waters 650-800 meters deep with a reservoir depth of 7,000 meters.

BP’s blown out Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico was about 1,610 meters deep.

The London-based company is the largest producer and one of the biggest investors in Azerbaijan — it also operates the ACG oilfield and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline — after becoming one of the early foreign entrants following the fall of the Soviet Union.

Dudley has stressed BP’s intention to restore its shattered reputation in the United States, where it produces a third of its oil and gas, but the Azerbaijan deal is a signal he will also move swiftly to bolster the company’s presence elsewhere as a backstop.

Even as he did so, the spotlight in the United States was swinging to mistakes made by President Barack Obama’s administration in the wake of the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon platform that started the country’s biggest ever oil spill.

A preliminary report released Wednesday by the commission appointed by Obama to investigate the disaster said that the administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the spill could become and committed other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis.