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Iran wants more Turkmen gas

MARCH 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian official said they wanted to increase gas imports from Turkmenistan to feed its northern region which doesn’t hold any gas reserves. “We import gas from Turkmenistan. It’s good for us because it means that we don’t need to get gas from [the] south to north- east Iran,” Ali Amirani, director at the National Iranian Gas Export Company, was quoted by Interfax Energy as saying. Gas relations between Iran and Turkmenistan are growing stronger and Iran is also mulling joint exploration activities in the border regions.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Remittances to Georgia fall, again

MARCH 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Remittances to Georgia fell again in February to $79.9m, a 2.6% decline on the year. Notably, money transfers from Russia and Greece continued to decline sharply while remittances from Italy, the US and Israel showed positive growth. As transfers from Greece have dramatically declined to around $8.5- $9.5m/month, Italy now ranks second behind Russia in the ranking of countries sending money to Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Uzbekistan sends soldiers to bolster border with Kyrgyzstan

MARCH 18/24 2016, OSH, Kyrgyzstan (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan sent two armoured personnel careers and solders its border near the Kyrgyz city of Osh as tension escalated in southern Kyrgyzstan ahead of local elections.

Senior officials from Kyrgyzstan’s government called the Uzbek military manoeuvres a provocation and President ALmazbek Atambayev cancelled a trip to Tashkent set for June to attend a conference of the region’s quasi military group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

“The Kyrgyz people are not the ones who will be kneeling, fearing [Uzbekistan’s] forces,” Mr Atambayev said at a press conference.

This appears to be an escalation of tension between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Kyrgyzstan argues that Uzbekistan’s actions violate a bilateral agreement against the militarisation of the border.

Large portions of the 1,300-km border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are undefined, dotted with enclaves and exclaves, where Kyrgyz and Uzbek people live. There are sizable Uzbek and Kyrgyz minorities in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, respectively.

Now, access to some border crossing points has been restricted. Officials in southern Kyrgyzstan reported that some anti-Uzbekistan demonstrations have broken out.

Kyrgyz PM Temir Sariyev appealed for calm.

“Nobody forbids protests but let us not be enemies from within, we must be united. Without unity we cannot solve foreign policy issues,” he said.

The unrest also comes at a sensitive time for Kyrgyzstan. It is holding regional elections in five southern cities, including Osh, on March 27.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Nur Otan drops Dariga Nazarbayeva as MP

MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – ALMATY — The results of the parliamentary elections may have been expected but there was a surprise lined up. A few days days after the vote the Nur Otan party dropped Dariga Nazarbayeva, eldest daughter of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, from its list of MPs (March 24).

The Conway Bulletin’s Central Asia newswire service (the Silk Road Intelligencer) broke the news on Thursday that Ms Nazarbayeva’s had been dropped by Nur Otan as an MP.

MP in 2012-14 and also held the post of deputy PM since last September, was in line to return to the lower house of Parliament and be nominated as speaker.

This would have granted her a powerful and respected position and also signalled that she was being lined up as a potential successor for her 75-year-old father as Kazakhstan’s second post-Soviet president.

There has been no explanation to the apparent change of plan but it set off various theories on the Kazakh presidential succession issue.

And last week, too, Ms Nazarbayeva’s son, 31-year-old Nurali Aliyev, quit as deputy mayor of Astana apparently to pursue business interests.

This effectively means that in one week, two key members of the president’s family have taken a step back from influential political positions.

One theory previously been put forward for Kazakhstan’s succession issue was that Ms Nazarbayeva would take over in the short term as president before making way for her son. That now appears off the agenda.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Kazakhstan’s KMG debt worsens

MARCH 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – International ratings agency Fitch said that Kazmunaigas’ adjusted debt ratio for 2015 might be worse than expected. A weak performance by KMG EP, Kazmunaigas’ upstream subsidiary, significantly lower dividends from its joint-ventures and a weaker tenge had combined to dent the company’s finances.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Azerbaijan issues $1b Eurobond for gas pipelines

MARCH 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s finance ministry issued a $1b 10-year Eurobond to fund the Southern Gas Corridor company which is building an energy transport route between the Caspian Sea and Europe.

The initial yield on the debt was 7%.

Analysts have said that the rare debt issue for such a high-profile

Azerbaijani energy project is another indication of just how heavily the economic downturn has impacted finances.

The Southern Gas Corridor is a state-owned company in charge of the design and construction of pipelines that will send gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe by 2019. These include TANAP, which will run across Turkey and TAP, which will link Greece to Italy.

The EU considers the project to be a priority for its energy security strategy as it reduces its reliance on Russia for gas. Azerbaijan is hoping to give its gas sector a major lift with the EU as a key client.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Netherlands extradites ex-Georgian spy

MARCH 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Giorgi Dgebuadze, a former high- ranking Georgian intelligence agent, was extradited to Georgia from the Netherlands. Mr Dgebuadze, who had served in the Constitutional Security Council, is wanted for charges related to the murder of three people in 2006. Dgebuadze had fled Georgia after the 2012 elections, triggering an Interpol manhunt. The Dutch police arrested Dgebuadze in 2014. The EU and the US have warned Georgia not to politicise its prosecution service.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Smuggling ring busts targeting Georgian oil

MARCH 23 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian authorities broke up an oil smuggling operation near the village of Ruisi in central Georgia, highlighting the lack of security for infrastructures across the South Caucasus.

Smugglers were siphoning off crude oil from the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline, a BP-operated 800km-long pipeline that transports oil from Azerbaijan to the Georgian Black Sea terminal of Supsa.

Smugglers had installed a parallel pipeline that branched off the main trunk and fed trucks.

Major infrastructure projects in the South Caucasus often appear fragile and vulnerable. In November, a fire at a data centre shut down the internet in Azerbaijan.

In 2011, an elderly woman damaged a major fibre- optic cable while digging for copper in a rural Georgian village, cutting internet access in Armenia.

Last year, too, rebels from the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has proclaimed independence, grabbed control of a section of the Baku-Supsa pipeline.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Moody downgrades Armenia’s bonds

MARCH 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – International ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Armenia’s government bonds to B1 from Ba3, as the economic crisis continues to bite. Moody’s said Armenia continues to be vulnerable to external factors, such as “declining remittances from Russia that have not yet bottomed out,” the agency said in a press statement. Moody’s also said the downgrade is linked to the worsening debt/GDP ratio.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Kazakh Kashagan field to reach commercial production next year

MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Halyk Bank effectively poured cold water over Kazakh officials’ forecasts that the giant Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea would meet commercial production of 75,000 barrels/day this year. Instead, Halyk Bank said that Kashagan would be operating effectively only by the end of 2017. Kashagan is vital for Kazakh oil output.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)