MAY 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — SkyBus, a small airline in Kazakhstan, opened additional charter flights for the summer months from eight different Kazakh cities to the Georgian resort town of Batumi, on the Black Sea coast. Batumi is Georgia’s tourist hotspot and the new air link shows how popular it is becoming with ordinary Kazakhs.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s ministry of oil and gas said it wants to double oil refining capacity in the country over the next three years, in an effort to increase the domestic output of oil products. The ministry said it plans to increase capacity to 20m tonnes by 2020 and then to 30m tonnes by 2030. Last year, Turkmenistan missed its goal of reaching its refining capacity of 15m tonnes. It currently only process around 11m tonnes/year.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ozoda Rakhmon, daughter of Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, was elected senator after a local by-election for Tajikistan’s 33-seat upper house of parliament. Ms Rakhmon won all votes cast by the 201 Dushanbe administrators that were eligible to vote, according to official media. In January, Ms Rakhmon, 38, was named head of the Presidential Administration. It is unclear whether Ms Rakhmon will have to relinquish her previous post to serve as senator.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — German investors presented a €30b ($34b) plan for the development of Kenderli, a new resort town on Kazakhstan’s Caspian Sea shore. The plan to build a new city near Aktau, to host around 200,000 inhabitants and several thousand tourists, has been touted for years. Now a group of German companies said it is ready to fund an initial €600m ($675m) for the project. Kazakhstan is trying to boost its tourist infrastructure and has earmarked the Caspian for development.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
JUNE 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A vote by the German parliament to recognise the killings of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as a genocide has reverberated around Europe.
Turkey, predictably, was outraged and recalled its ambassador from Berlin. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor who has come under much pressure to reduce the flow of migrants from Syria and beyond to Europe, appealed for calm. She has a vested interest, of course, as she is relying on Turkey to stem much of the migrant flow.
The decision by the German parliament to recognise the genocide, which has always been framed by Turkey as a consequence of the chaos of World War I, actually changes very little, other than affirming a major plank of Armenian foreign policy. It doesn’t change German policy towards Turkey, although it may impact the Turkish view of Germany.
What it definitely does do, though, is remind the world of the dreadful killings over 100 years ago of around 1.5m Armenians – whether you agree that this technically constitutes a genocide or not. And this is important.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
JUNE 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Nurlan Smagulov, one of Kazakhstan’s wealthiest businessmen, said he has found a buyer for his shopping malls in Astana and Aktobe, both under the MEGA brand. Last year, Mr Smagulov sold his MEGA shopping mall in Shymkent, in the south of the country. Mr Smagulov said proceeds from the sales will fund the growing costs for the completion of the MEGA Silk Way shopping centre in Astana.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Nurtas Shmanov, head of Kazakhstan’s pipeline operator KazTransOil, said the company is ready to increase shipments of Russian oil to China via a Kazakh pipeline from 7m to 10m tonnes/year. Mr Shmanov said the pipeline wouldn’t need to be expanded to carry out the operation, effectively hinting that Kazakhstan could downsize its own oil exports to China.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
JUNE 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned Southern Gas Corridor company said it will issue a second $1b Eurobond by the end of 2016 or early next year, Bloomberg reported. The Southern Gas Corridor, which is in charge of a pipeline network that will connect Azerbaijan’s gas fields with European consumers by 2019, issued a $1b Eurobond in March. Sustained low oil prices have hit the financial feasibility of several large infrastructure projects across the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — State-owned company United Airports of Georgia said it had opened a tender for the construction of a new airport in the town of Zugdidi, 300km west of Tbilisi. The new airport, which will be built in the same location as the existing one, will service both domestic and international flights.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a meeting in Astana, leaders of the Russia-backed Eurasian Economic Union delayed the establishment of a single energy market to 2025. Previously, the EEU’s plan was to roll out a barrier-free single market for oil and gas by 2024. The parties did not comment on the reasons for the delay.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)