Category Archives: Uncategorised

Tajikistan strips 6 RFE/RL reporters of accreditation

NOV. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said that the Tajik authorities had stripped six of its reporters of their accreditation after the news agency published a story criticising the promotion of President Emomali Rakhmon’s daughter to a senior foreign ministry position.

Mr Rakhmon has a reputation for promoting his friends and family to high positions in the Tajik government and some analysts have said that he is setting up his son, Rustam Emomali, to take over the presidency from him. Mr Rakhmon has changed the constitution to scrap minimum age limits for presidential candidates.

Earlier this year Rukhshona Rahmonova, his daughter, was made an MP and now she has been appointed the deputy head of a department within the foreign ministry.

RFE/RL said that the stripping of its journalists’ accreditation was an attack on the whole agency.

“We are outraged by this action by the Tajik government, which is a blatant attack on our ability to do our jobs as journalists,” it said in a statement on its website.

The media scene for journalists in Tajikistan has been worsening over the past few years. The government has jailed both dissenting journalists and opposition activists.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 307, published on Dec. 2 2016)

Kazakh state cuts petrol controls

NOV. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government said that it would ditch price controls of AI-80 grade petrol from 2017. The move is inline with a policy developed last year. It ditched price controls of AI-92 and AI-94 in September 2015 shortly after a sharp devaluation in the Kazakh tenge. The tenge had taken a nosedive after a peg to the US dollar was scrapped, putting the government’s price controls under major pressure.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Fighting becomes intense in Turkmen-Afghan border

NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Residents of Marchak, a village on the Turkmen-Afghan border,told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that fighting in the border areas was becoming more serious. The Turkmen government has said it was concerned about a move north by the Taliban but has denied that there is currently a problem. The RFE/RL report suggests otherwise.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

OPEC courts non-members, including Azerbaijan

NOV. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s energy minister, Natig Aliyev, said that OPEC had asked Azerbaijan and other non-OPEC members to cut oil production in an attempt to raise prices. Azeri newspaper Respublika quoted Mr Aiyev as saying that OPEC wanted non-members to cut up to 800,000 barrels of oil per day of production, a figure that it said would eat into the vast reserves. OPEC and non-OPEC members are due to meet again in Vienna on Nov. 28 to decide on the final level of cuts to production.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Stock market: Nostrum Oil & Gas

NOV. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Amsterdam-based Nostrum Oil & Gas posted a decline in revenues it its Q3 report this week, but that didn’t stop investors buying its stock.

Nostrum’s stock price climbed back to November 2015 levels, seemingly dispersing the tough months of 2016, when oil prices plunged to around $30/barrel.

The company successfully cut costs and hopes to contain the drop in production to around 10% this year. Next year, the company will further reduce costs once it starts sending its oil through the KazTransOil pipeline due to be completed in Q2 2017.

“We look forward to realising a significant decrease in transportation costs once the KTO pipeline connection is complete by Q2 next year,” CEO Kai-Uwe Kessel said in a statement.

“Our focus now turns towards the 2017 drilling programme and delivering our major infrastructure project, GTU3, on time and on budget.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Trump boosts copper, companies in Central Asia benefit

NOV. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Copper prices have gained around 12% to a 16-month high of $2.67/lb, since the election of Donald Trump as US president-elect, showing the power of his words.

Trump’s plan to invest $1 trillion in overhauling ageing infrastructure across the United States gave a boost to the global market price of copper, a key element for large construction projects.

Companies in Central Asia that focus on copper production, chiefly Central Asia Metals and KAZ Minerals in Kazakhstan, also benefited from the Trump effect on copper prices.

Both companies saw their share prices soar in the London Stock Exchange by around 20 – 25% in the past two weeks, a sign that the commodity slump could timidly start to reverse.

Central Asia Metals seized the opportunity to acquire a new deposit in Kazakhstan this week, which showed just how bullish the market has become.

Zak Mir, an analyst for the Proactive Investor website, said that Central Asia Metals’ stock price, which is already at its historical high, is on track to reach 240p/share within the next few months. This would be almost double this year’s low of 124p/share.

It’s been a roller coaster year for commodity companies in the region and this doesn’t look like changing.

Despite the uncertainty, the metals market might well reverse their downward trend before oil prices start growing again, marking an important split between the two sectors.

The Central Asian and South Caucasus region has been badly hit by the fall in commodity prices in the last two years. Any sign of recovery is good news.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Kazakhstan-based Nostrum revenues drop

NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan-focused Nostrum Oil and Gas posted a 35% fall in revenues for the first nine months of 2016, compared to the same period last year, a slight recovery compared to H1 results. Nostrum said it had successfully cut costs to counter sustained low oil prices. Production averaged 38,900 barrels/day in the reported period, down 12% from 2015. The company said it expects production to average 40,000 barrels/day by year-end.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Kazakhstan imposes restrictions on labour unions

NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch accused Kazakhstan of deliberately creating mountains of red tape to thwart and frustrate labour unions. In a report entitled: “Kazakhstan: Workers’ Rights Violated, Restricted”, HRW said that the Kazakh elite grew nervous of labour unions after a strike in 2011 ended with police shooting dead several protesters. HRW said that the government had imposed a registration system on labour unions as a way of monitoring their activities.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

MTS revenues in Armenia and Turkmenistan drop

NOV. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian telecoms company MTS published its first quarterly report after discontinuing operations in Uzbekistan, posting a 1.3% decline in revenues in Q3 across its operations in the former Soviet Union, compared to the same period last year. In rouble terms, revenues in Armenia were down 19% to 2.1b roubles and in Turkmenistan they fell by 17% to 1.2b roubles.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Armenia buys Russian missiles

NOV. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia has bought a number of Iskander-M missiles from Russia, Armenia president Serzh Sargsyan told Russian media. The Iskander-M missile is one of Russia’s most advanced missile systems. Mr Sargsyan said that Armenia had been obligated to by the missile system to balance against the threat posed by Azerbaijan. Armenia and Azerbaijan are still officially at war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)f