A contract for France’s largest natural gas company to buy the commodity from Azerbaijan shows the decades-old structure of Europe’s energy market is starting to crumble. For the first time, GDF Suez SA (GSZ) signed a 25-year contract to buy gas from BP Plc and partners in the former Soviet republic at prices tied to those in Western Europe’s domestic gas markets, a person with knowledge of the matter said, asking not to be named because the terms are confidential. The change matters because purchases previously were made at prices tied to crude oil, which has doubled in the last five years, an expense then passed on to consumers. Europe’s gas contracts have been tied to oil since the 1960s as a way of providing certainty to suppliers who would then invest billions to build fields and pipelines. More recently, as gas prices fell and oil rose, utilities including […]