Author Archives: admin

Kazakhstan scraps nuclear plans

DEC. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh government has scrapped plans to build a new nuclear power station, despite years of speculation over its location, size and financing, media reported quoting energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik. Mr Shkolnik said the country was producing enough power from other sources, although the government’s shrinking budget probably played a role in the decision.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Russia drops Kyrgyz projects

DEC. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev said a recession in Russia had hit the Kremlin’s finances so hard that it had pulled out of financing two hydropower projects in Kyrgyzstan. Russia’s economic demise presents an opportunity for China or others to fund infrastructure projects in Central Asia in return for influence. The two projects had been expected to cost $3.2b.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Tajik aluminium company receives gold licence

DEC. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — TALCO, the Tajik state-owned aluminium company, received the rights to develop a cluster of gold and precious metals deposits in the area near Ayni, north-west Tajikistan. The Tajik government granted TALCO the rights to the deposits of Konchoch and Skalnoye for 25 years. TALCO will also build a processing facility in the area.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Azerbaijan manat drops 50% after peg is ditched

DEC. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s Central Bank cut the manat from its US dollar peg just before Christmas, immediately triggering a 50% fall in its value.

This was, in effect, the second currency devaluation by Azerbaijan in 2015. The manat started 2016 trading at 1.56 /$1, 50% lower than it had been a year earlier.

Speaking a couple of days after the un-pegging of the manat, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said officials had had no choice but to effectively devalue the manat.

“The main reason for the change in the manat’s rate was a decline in oil price by three times. It means that the change was inevitable,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

This is a major climb down from an earlier position held by Mr Aliyev and the Central Bank. At the start of 2015 he told media that a devaluation was definitely not on the cards only to order a 33% cut in the value of the manat in Feb. 2015.

Since then , in the past 10 months, the Azerbaijani Central Bank has spent billions of dollars trying to defend the value of the manat despite analysts warning that a devaluation was needed. When Kazakhstan ditched its own peg to the US dollar in August, triggering a 40% drop in the value of the tenge, this second devaluation of the manat became an inevitability.

Azerbaijan has been particularly exposed to the drop in oil and gas prices — down to 11-year-lows. Oil and gas sales make up around 95% of its export revenue and 75% of total government revenues. To counter the sharp fall in prices, down by around 75% since July 2014, the Azerbaijani government has slashed spending on infrastructure and social projects.

Fitch, the ratings agency, said the devaluation was needed but that it would hurt the banking sector.

“The sharp exchange rate adjustment eases the oil shock’s fiscal impact by boosting the local-currency value of oil revenues and a floating currency should help stabilise reserves,” it said. “The devaluation will hurt the banking sector, which has large amounts of foreign- currency denominated loans.”

The government has imposed currency controls over foreign exchange transactions. It said that people wanting to exchange over $500 worth of manat now needed to present a formal ID.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

China gas payments fall for Turkmenistan

DEC. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – China pays considerably less for the gas it bought from Turkmenistan between Jan. and Nov. 2015, compared to the same period in 2014, Chinese media reporting quoting official stats. China increased supplies from Turkmenistan by 13.8% during this period but still only paid $22.3b, 15% less than the total bill during the same period in 2014. Turkmenistan is largely reliant on China for its revenues although it is developing a gas route to India.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Azerbaijan finds two bodies in the Caspian Sea

JAN. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s emergency ministry confirmed that it had recovered two bodies from the Turkmen sector of the Caspian Sea thought to be those of workers washed overboard during a storm and fire on an oil rig in December. 33 workers died in the fire, the worst offshore oil rig platform disaster since the North Sea Piper Alpha fire in 1988.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Utility prices rise in Kazakhstan

JAN. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Media in Kazakhstan reported that utility companies had increased water and electricity prices by up to 15%, more evidence of latent inflation in the Kazakh economy linked to a sharp drop in the value of the tenge. Analysts have said frustration is growing among ordinary people about price rises. Electricity price rises in particular are a sensitive issue across the S.Caucasus/C.Asia region.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Editorial: Horse-play in Kyrgyzstan

JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Scottish welder Michael Mcfeat was seeing in the New Year at the canteen in the Kumtor gold mine high up in the Tien Shan mountains when he sent a message back home to friends in Scotland jokingly referring to the chuchuk, a horse-meat sausage, as a horse’s penis.

It was a joke that was intended to raise smiles back home, and it may well have done, but Mcfeat’s error was to make it on an open Facebook account. Locals workers read his joke. They were furious.

Mcfeat is back home now, lucky to have escaped a beating from angry locals, while the Toronto-listed Centerra Gold that runs the mine is dealing with the latest PR setback in its relations with Kyrgyzstan.

The Kyrgyz may be overly sensitive to foreigners laughing at their national identity but, 25 years after the fall of the USSR, it is still a young country. Instead, the onus should be on international companies working in Kyrgyzstan and the rest of Central Asia to educate their foreign staff and also to impose some all important social media rules and guidelines.

After all what the chuchuk is to the Kyrgyz, the haggis is to the Scots.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Georgia announces first wind farm tender

JAN. 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia announced a tender to build its first wind farm in conjunction with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The project is estimated to cost $35m, with the EBRD giving a $25m loan. The wind farm will consist of 10 turbines and produce two megawatts of power. States in Central Asia and the South Caucasus are investing in wind power to help meet power demand.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Service companies sign deals with Azerbaijan

DEC. 22-29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Norway’s Agility, Britain’s KCA Deutag and British-Azerbaijani joint venture SOCAR-Cape all signed contracts with BP and Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR to provide services to off- shore energy projects in the Caspian Sea. These separate deals show Azerbaijan’s reliance on Western technology to operate and service its oil and gas projects.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)