Author Archives: admin

ADB drops Tajikistan-Turkmenistan-Afghanistan rail project

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) cut funding for a railway project that would have linked Tajikistan and Turkmenistan via Afghanistan because of a deterio- ration in security.

The decision will be a blow to various infrastructure projects in Central Asia that involve Afghanistan, including the high profile TAPI gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India and the CASA-1000 power transmission route running from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Pakistan.

“Although Turkmenistan has completed construction of its section of the railway, we would not like to construct a railway where security is not guaranteed. It’s very risky,” ADB’s country director C.C.Yu told media.

This year, the Taliban has increased its attacks in northern Afghanistan, at one point capturing the town of Kunduz near Tajikistan. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have all warned that security is worsening although, previously, infrastructure projects have not been postponed or delayed.

The railway route in question was supposed to run over 440km and bypass Uzbekistan, often considered a troublesome neighbour by Tajikistan in particular and Turkmenistan to a lesser extent.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

ENA will be managed better by us, says Armenian billionaire

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an interview with local media, Samvel Karapetyan, the Moscow based billionaire who bought Armenia’s electricity distribution network earlier this year said that he thought the business could become profitable without massive states subsidies and, also, that he regarded himself as a long-term investor.

Mr Karapetyan had surprised people by buying ENA (Electrical Networks of Armenia) in September only a few weeks after thousands of protesters had demonstrated against proposed electricity prices rises. He bought ENA from Inter RAO UES, a Russian utilities company that wanted to exit the market.

“Electric Networks of Armenia is a good company and has been active for a long time and it will, now, become considerably better managed by us,” he said.

He scorned the suggestion that he’d been placed under pressure to buy the company or that he wanted to buy a major public company to help his brother, an MP, become PM.

Perhaps most importantly, Mr Karapetyan hinted that he wouldn’t be looking to raise prices for electricity soon.

“We aren’t thinking about margins yet. We will not be thinking about it for five years certainly.” he told the mediamax.am website.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Turkish President visits Turkmenistan

DEC. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan talked with Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. The talks had been planned earlier in the year but their timing was important as Mr Erdogan is trying to build support for Turkey in its row with Russia.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

US and EU probes Azerbaijan’s human rights

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US and Europe piled more pressure on Azerbaijan over its human rights record. New Jersey representative Chris Smith introduced a bill in the US Congress that would ban Azerbaijani officials from receiving US visas. The Council of Europe also said it would check whether Azerbaijan is compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Kazakhstan’s navy tests missile

DEC. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s navy has test fired for the first time an anti-aircraft missile from one of its warships in the Caspian Sea, eurasianet.org reported. Caspian Sea littoral states have been increasing their naval presence and armaments in the Caspian Sea over the past few years.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Swiss company seals deal with Azerbaijani pipeline project

DEC. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swiss company ABB will provide the IT control infrastructure for the TANAP pipeline which will pump 16b cubic metres of gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey and link up with the Europe-bound gas grid (Dec. 15). ABB has already worked on telecoms systems for pipelines, notably with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The company did not disclose the value of the contract. TANAP is considered vital to boosting European deliveries of Azerbaijani gas.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Construction begins on TAPI with Turkmen leadership

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – After a decade of talks, Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and leaders from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India officially started construction of the TAPI pipeline that, they hope, will pump gas from Central Asia to South Asia by end-2018.

The $10b project is ambitious and fraught with risk. For a start nearly half the 1,800km route crosses Afghanistan where security has worsened over the past couple of years. This week the Asian Development Bank cut funding for a Turkmenistan-Tajikistan rail project that also crossed north Afghanistan because of security concerns.

Still, at the official opening ceremony for the TAPI pipeline in Mary, Turkmenistan, Mr Berdymukhamedov was in an upbeat mood.

“TAPI is designed to become a new effective step towards the formation of the modern architecture of global energy security, a powerful driver of economic and social stability in the Asian region,” media quoted him as saying.

By December 2018, so the plan goes, Turkmenistan should start pumping 33b cubic metres of gas a year to India.

But, as Anupama Sen, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, explained for India, TAPI has always been more of a political, rather than gas supply, project. She said India is increasing coal production to meet power demand as it is cheaper than importing gas.

“India’s negotiations over TAPI have been driven by diplomacy,” she said.

India has been trying for years to bolster its influence in Central Asia where Russia and China are so dominant. It lost out in 2013 on a stake in the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea to China. TAPI now gives it a stake in Central Asia.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Azerbaijan’s SOCAR output falls

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A source at Azerbaijan’s statistic committee told Reuters that SOCAR’s low output for the first 11 months of 2015 had pushed down total oil and gas production in Azerbaijan. Azeri-Chirag- Guneshli, a BP-operated offshore oilfield, also contributed to a contraction in production of 0.5%.

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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Kazakhstan sells off Batumi terminal

DEC. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The oil terminal at the port of Batumi, on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, will be among the companies that Kazakhstan sells off to investors during a privatisation round in 2016 and 2017. In 2008, KazTransOil, a subsidiary of state-owned Kazmunaigas, bought the Batumi oil terminal. Kazakhstan needs to sell off state-owned assets to raise cash.

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(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

8 dead, 26 missing after storm hits Azerbaijani Caspian rigs

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At least eight rig workers died when a storm smashed into an oil and gas platform in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea and triggered a gas explosion.

Another 23 people are still missing from Platform No. 10 of the shallow- water Guneshli field, operated by Azerbaijan’s state-owned SOCAR. Three others are also missing from another platform in the Oil Rocks field after being swept overboard.

Rescue workers said there was little chance of finding any survivors. This means that the final death toll will probably hit 34 — the worst dis- aster in the history of Caspian Sea oil and gas production and the deadliest offshore platform accident since 167 people died in the Piper Alpha acci- dent in the North Sea in 1988.

At a press conference in Baku on Wednesday a downcast Khalig Mamedov, SOCAR vice-president , said: “Despite all the efforts, regrettably, no-one has been found. This is the biggest tragedy in SOCAR’s history.”

Media reported that most of the oil workers who died on Platform No.10 were killed in a botched attempt to abandon the platform in one of the lifeboats. Two dozen workers were successfully rescued from the plat- form, though.

As of Thursday, the blaze on Platform No. 10 was still burning.

The accident stunned people in Azerbaijan. Football matches across the country held a minute’s silence. Along the seafront in Baku people silently laid down bunches of roses. Others sobbed, looking out to sea.

The gas explosion at Platform No. 10 cut production at all 28 wells, 24 oil wells and four gas wells, of the shallow-water Guneshli field. Daily output at Guneshli was around 6,500 barrels/day of oil and 400m cubic metres of natural gas per year, Reuters reported.

Importantly for Azerbaijan’s overall oil production, BP said that output at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field complex that it manages was untouched by the accident.

Azerbaijan has been struggling to maintain oil output this year. This accident will dent both its safety record and oil production levels.

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(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)