Author Archives: admin

Turkmenistan not doing enough to attract Western firms -US

DEC. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – If Turkmenistan wants to realise its potential and become one of the world’s top energy exporters it should improve its foreign investment climate, Reuters quoted Daniel Rosenblum, deputy assistant secretary for Central Asia at the U.S. Department of State, as saying on a trip to Ashgabat.

Western companies have found it difficult to enter the Turkmen energy sector despite an apparent abundance of hydrocarbon wealth. It is estimated that Turkmenistan holds the world’s four largest gas reserves.

Turkmenistan only offers Western companies service contracts on its various gas projects and not the production sharing agreements that many want. And this, Mr Rosenblum said, would hold back Turkmenistan’s development as a gas exporter.

“A critical element of success is to create the right mix of incentives,” he said according to the Reuters report.

Most of Turkmenistan’s gas flows to China through a network of pipelines that cross Central Asia but Turkmen officials have said they want to widen the client base. This includes pumping gas to Europe and India.

Turkmenistan will officially begin work on the TAPI pipeline that will, it hopes, eventually pump gas directly to consumers in India. Its an ambitious project and one that Western companies had previously expressed interest in.

The lack of a production sharing agreement, though, coupled with a poor record for corruption and the sheer ambition of building a 1,700km pipeline across unstable Afghanistan, with all its security concerns, has deterred potential suitors.

In a thinly veiled criticism of Turkmenistan, Mr Rosenblum told a conference: “Land-locked countries with potentially large resources, such as Turkmenistan, need to move expeditiously to capture market opportunities since their competitors are not idle.”

Although he wasn’t specific, Mr Rosenblum appeared to be saying that Western companies with their expertise and know-how would be able to help Turkmenistan speed up development of its hydro-carbon sector.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Kazakh Central Bank skips meeting

DEC. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Central Bank cancelled its monthly monetary policy meeting for the second consecutive month, disappointing markets which were looking for guidance on future policy. The Central Bank said that money markets were too unstable for it to announce policy. Critics said it had lost control of the tenge.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Georgia strips Saakashvili of his citizenship

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili signed a decree stripping Mikheil Saakashvili of his Georgian citizenship.

When he was in power between 2003 and 2013 Mr Saakashvili painted himself as proud Georgian patriot and it is likely that losing his Georgian citizenship will hurt and even humiliate him.

Under Georgian laws, though, dual citizenship is illegal.

In May this year, Mr Saakashvili took Ukrainian citizenship, allowing him to take up an offer by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to be governor in Odessa.

This meant that, formally, the government had to strip Mr Saakashvili of his Georgian citizenship.

“Based on the law of Georgian citizenship, President Giorgi Margvelashvili signed a decree terminating Mikheil Saakashvili’s citizenship due to his acquisition of a foreign country’s nationality,” the Georgian presidential press service said.

The AFP news agency quoted Mr Saakashvili as telling Georgia’s Rus- tavi-2 TV station that he was angry.

“They can take away my passport, but they can’t do anything with my love for my Motherland,” he said.

Although the constitution bans Georgians from taking dual nationality it doesn’t force foreigners taking Georgian citizenship to renounce their original nationality.

Georgia’s prosecutor-general also wants to arrest Mr Saakashvili and charge him with various crimes. Mr Saakashvili has always said the charges are politically motivated. Several of Mr Saakashvili’s former government colleagues and government officials have been arrested.

The European Union and the West have also warned Georgia’s government not to politicise the criminal system.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Kazakh president signs NGO law

DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev signed into law the creation of an agency under the ministry of justice that will be charged with the responsibility of approving funding to non-government agencies. The law has proved controversial with campaigners saying that it is similar to a law introduced by Russia which banned NGOs from taking funding from foreign organisations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Georgian president appoints new head of pres. admin

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili appointed Giorgi Abashishvili, his economics adviser, as head of his presidential administration. Media said Mr Abashishvili was the third head of the presidential administration since Mr Margvelashvili took office in 2013.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas and Vitol strike $3b futures deal

DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company, said it reached an agreement with international oil trader Vitol for the forward sale of crude oil for up to $3b, a deal that the debt-ridden Kazakh producer needs to maintain financial stability during a period of low oil prices.

Vitol will buy oil from Kazmunaigas’ share of oil produced at the Tengiz field in western Kazakhstan and then pumped by the CPC pipeline around the northern tip of the Caspian Sea to Novorossiysk in Russia.

Kazmunaigas, commonly known as KMG, will receive advance payments in the short term.

“It is expected that KMG will be able to draw the first tranche within 2-4 months,” the company said in a statement.

Neither company disclosed the amount of oil that will be traded and the duration of the contract, but a Bulletin calculation showed that the deal could range between 3 and 5 years, depending on how much of the 2-3m tonnes of oil KMG exports each year from Tengiz Vitol will buy and how big the discount is.

By committing to the sale of futures, Kazmunaigas earnsmuch needed cash in the short term to cover its outstanding debts. But there will be a reasonable discount which will manifest itself over the next few years.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Tajik court sentences IRPT activist

NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Tajikistan handed a 9-1⁄2 year prison sentence to an activist of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) which, until September, had been the country’s only opposition party. Hasan Rahimov had been the IRPT chief in the southern Farkhor district. He is the first of two dozen IRPT activists to stand trial on various terrorism charges. The IRPT says the charges are politically motivated.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Kazakh KAZ Minerals boost copper production

DEC. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh miner KAZ Minerals said it had produced its first copper from the Aktogay project in east Kazakhstan. KAZ Minerals,previously known as Kazakhmys, forecast that the Aktogay project will produce 15,000 tonnes of copper/year over the next decade.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Inflation rises in Kazakhstan

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Inflation in Kazakhstan to the year ending Nov. 30 measured 12.8%, the state’s statistics committee said. The sharp prices rises show the impact of the tenge devaluation on the economy. The main inflation driver has been food prices.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Stock market: Tethys Petroleum, Roxi Petroleum

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Oil prices fell by 2.3% to $43/barrel of Brent crude this week.

Tethys Petroleum shares jumped 15% in one day on Dec. 2 to 4.88p, but fell later in the week to close at 4.50p on Friday, a 5.9% increase over the last week.

Roxi Petroleum shares fell sharply to 7p on Friday, down 10% from last week.

Gold prices rose by 2.7% this week to $1,086/ounce, which, together with positive industrial news, propped up the region’s principal gold miners.

Kyrgyzstan-focused miner Centerra Gold gained around 6% this week on the Toronto Stock Exchange, closing at 7.61 Canadian dollars on Friday.

After announcing a new financing deal for its gold deposit in Armenia, Toronto-listed gold miner Lydian International shares gained 30% in just two days. Lydian share price then fell back to 0.27 Canadian dollars on Friday.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)