Category Archives: Uncategorised

Azerbaijan’s energy company says Greek gas network deal may collapse

JULY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A deal for Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR to lead a €400m takeover of Greece’s gas pipeline network DESFA could collapse after the Greek government agreed a lower-than-expected domestic gas price rise.

Anar Mammadov, CEO of SOCAR’s Greek subsidiary, said after a meeting with Panos Skourletis, Greece’s energy minister that the gas price increase undermined DESFA’s profitability.

“If implemented, those changes would reduce the value of the company and its future profitability

dramatically,” he told media. “The only thing I can say right now is that I can’t see how the tender could be salvaged if those changes are implemented as planned.”

The Greek parliament still has to approve the price rise for it to be implemented.

In 2013, SOCAR won a bid to buy 66% of DESFA, Greece’s gas distributor. The deal was later frozen by the European Commission, citing the so-called Third Energy Package, a 2009 regulation designed to counter vertical integration between gas suppliers and distributors.

In recent months, though, Italy’s Snam has come forward as a potential partner for SOCAR. Snam would buy 17% and SOCAR would take 49%, which mean the takeover complies with the EU’s requirements.

Buying DESFA is important to Azerbaijan because Greece will play a major role hosting part of a pipeline network that will pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe.

The EU has called this new pipeline network a vital strategic goal to reduce its reliance on gas supplies from Russia with which it has had increasingly strained relations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Kazakh energy company spat worsens

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an increasingly vicious argument, Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company Kazmunaigas accused independent directors of its London-traded upstream subsidiary KMG EP, of misrepresenting its position over a buy-out scheme it was trying to promote. Kazmunaigas’ letter, published by Kazakhstan’s stock exchange, said that its purchase offer for KMG EP’s GDRs still stands and that the independent directors had overesti- mated KMG EP’s operational performance.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Azerbaijan’s Gilan Holding to construct Baku tower

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s construction company Gilan Holding picked Switzerland- based Liebherr as the provider of cranes for a skyscraper complex to be built in Baku. Gilan’s project for The Crescent Bay, will include a hotel, a shopping mall and a residential unit and is one of the biggest real estate projects currently planned in Azerbaijan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Trade and GDP shrink in Tajikistan

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s Statistics Committee said that trade turnover in H1 2016 shrank by 2.8%, compared to the same period last year. Overall, Tajikistan posted a negative trade balance, as it exported goods and services worth $439.4m and imported $1.5b. The Committee also said that the country’s GDP grew by 6.6% in H1, in line with government projection of a 7% growth by the end of the year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Zhirayr Sefilyan: A radical Armenian war hero

JULY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Charismatic and enigmatic, Zhirayr Sefilyan, exists on the fringe of Armenia’s fractious political spectrum. He was virtually unknown outside Armenia until an armed group of his supporters captured a police station in southern Yerevan on July 17, killed a police commander and took several people hostage.

Clashes between anti-government protesters and police followed and now Sefilyan is spoken of in foreign ministries from Russia to the United States.

The slim 49-year-old has the air of a radical outsider. A Lebanese- Armenian, Sefilyan was a young army officer during the war that Azerbaijan and Armenia-backed forces fought in the early 1990s for control of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

As an infantry commander, Sefilyan played a key role one of the greatest victories for the Armenia-backed rebels when they captured the city of Shusha.

This battle on May 8 1992 is fixed in Armenian lore, as the point when the war for Nagorno-Karabakh turned in their favour.

Until that point they had been on the backfoot.

After taking Shusha, despite being outnumbered and out-gunned, the Armenia-backed rebels scored a number of victories and rolled back the Azerbaijani forces until a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1994 ended the war.

Afterwards, Sefilyan led veteran groups and campaigned for better pensions, housing and rights. An intense man, his political views appeared to harden over the years and he drifted more and more towards the fringe of the political spectrum. His Founding Parliament movement calls for an overhaul of politics, accusing politicians of corruption. It has never taken part in an election and its support is estimated at a few thousand.

At the movement’s core is Sefilyan. He has now been arrested three times — in 2007, 2015 and in June 2016.

In June, police arrested Sefilyan for possessing illegal weapons. This arrest triggered the hostage-taking in Yerevan on July 17 and the subsequent clashes between protesters and police.

So far one policeman has been killed when armed men captured the police station and more than 50 people have been injured in clashes between police and demonstrators.

Sefilyan, the fringe radical, has now taken centre stage in Armenia’s politics.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Turkmen President urges to vote on new constitution

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ordered the Council of Elders to vote on a new constitution in mid-September. The Council of Elders is an advisory body chaired by Mr Berdymukhamedov widely believed to rubber-stamp his diectorates. A proposed new constitution that would effectively extend Mr Berdymukhamedov’s term as president was published in February.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Turkmenistan reorganises its oil and gas ministry

JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a move that took observers by surprise, Turkmenistan abolished its oil and gas ministry which had, officially, run the most profitable economic sector in the country, part of a wider structural reform of the government.

At a cabinet meeting, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov justified the move as an effort to improve management and governance systems n the energy sector.

Turkmenistan is considered an important stakeholder in the world’s energy nexus, and the move shook analysts. It holds the fourth-largest gas reserves in the world and exports gas mostly to China via pipeline. For over a decade, European and US lobby groups have pushed for a Trans-Caspian Pipeline to pump Turkmen gas to Europe. Turkmenistan is also building TAPI, a gas pipeline to export gas to India, via Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Simon Pirani, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said that aside from internal causes, which are hard to guess, a range of external factors could have played in Turkmenistan’s decision to reorganise its hydrocarbon sector.

“The continuing relationship with China, despite lower off-take of gas than Turkmen officials had hoped, the improved ties with Iran and the quite bad relationship with Russia could all be relevant factors,” he told The Conway Bulletin.

The change, however, is unlikely to shift the way that Turkmenistan does business, a system that revolves around the whims and decisions of President Berdymukhamedov.

“Companies and international organisations are aware that Turkmenistan is a centralised system,” Mr Pirani said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Armenia’s power company to invest in rebuilding

JULY 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s power generation company Hydro Corporation said it will invest 8.9b drams ($4.2) to rebuild its small hydropower station on the Argichi river in the east of the country. The hydropower station was built in 2013 and financed through a loan from Germany’s development bank KfW.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Uzbekistan’s GDP grows by 7.8%

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan’s Statistics Committee said that the country’s GDP grew by 7.8% in H1 2016, compared to the same period last year. Growth was slightly slower than in the first half of 2015, when GDP grew by 8.1%. Official statistics in Uzbekistan come with a health warning as they are often manipulated by the government.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Armed group captures Armenian capital police station

JULY 17-21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian police and and anti-government supporters clashed sporadically throughout the week outside a police station in Yerevan that was captured on Sunday by gunmen calling for the release of a jailed opposition leader.

The clashes were the worst in Yerevan since demonstrators fought police over plans to increase electricity prices in July and August 2015.

Most of the fighting between protesters and police was small-scale but on Wednesday night riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters. The protesters responded by throwing stones and charging the police. Media reported that 51 people, including 28 policemen, were injured. Police made three arrests.

PM Hovik Abrahamyan dismissed both the protesters and hostage-takers.

“What happened in the police precinct is inadmissible and should be condemned, since real changes cannot be achieved through violence,” he told the media.

As Armenia’s economy stagnates, frustration is rising making flash- points, more common.

Now, mainly angry young Armenians, have latched on to the arrest of Zhirair Sefilyan, the leader of a little- known opposition group, called the Founding Parliament movement, as a cause through which to vent their frustration.

Sefilyan was arrested last month for plotting a coup. His supporters have said the charges are false and have been spread to undermine the former military commander.

One policeman was killed during the attack on the police station. The stand-off around the police station continues.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)