SEPT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP said it will suspend operations at the Chirag oil platform, in Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian Sea because of planned maintainence work. BP didn’t specify when Chirag would resume operations. Chirag, together with Azeri and Guneshli, is one of the most important oil fields in Azerbaijan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -Has Europe’s democracy watchdog, the OSCE, shot itself in the foot by deciding not to monitor Azerbaijan’s up and coming parliamentary election?
Certainly it must have been irritating that the Azerbaijani authorities had told the OSCE that it can have barely half the number of monitors it had asked for on the ground. But that feels like scant justification for pulling out altogether.
Instead, this feels personal.
The Azerbaijani authorities have been in menacing mood, pressuring anybody in their way and this has included the OSCE. Earlier this year, the OSCE closed its office in Baku under pressure from the Azerbaijani authorities.
Now it feels that the OSCE has been able to exact some sort of payback by crying foul over monitor numbers, pulling its observation team from Azerbaijan’s Nov. 1 election altogether and drawing yet more international condemnation on Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev.
But this is, surely, an opportunity missed.
Would it not have made more sense to monitor the election as best as possible with limited resources. That way the West can improve its understand of what is going on in Azerbaijan and maintain closer contact with ordinary Azerbaijanis.
There will be other Western vote monitoring teams at the election but without the size and experience of the OSCE team, the West is severely limited and this is a crying shame.
By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TeliaSonera, the Swedish telecoms company, wants to sell its stakes in mobile phone companies across the Central Asia and South Caucasus region after a series of high-profile corruption and bribery allegations dragged down its operations.
The Stockholm-based company owns stakes in Azercell, Geocell, Ucell, Kcell and Tcell and analysts said that any telecoms company looking to pick up a bargain may be able to buy its assets cheaply.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s interior ministry said security forces had killed the fugitive former deputy defence minister Gen. Abduhalim Mirzo Nazarzoda after a manhunt spanning nearly a fortnight. The authorities in Tajikistan have accused Nazarzoda of masterminding two attacks on police stations in Dushanbe and a nearby town on Sept. 4 that killed two dozen people.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — If oil prices remain steady at roughly $50/barrel, Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company, Kazmunaigas will post a profit of 75b tenge ($279m) in 2015, Sauat Mynbayev, the company chairman, told the Interfax news agency. In 2014, the company posted a profit of nearly 200b tenge ($743m at the current rate). Mr Mynbayev said the government’s decision to let the tenge float free against the dollar has helped contain losses.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Iranian ambassador in Tashkent, Ali Mardani Fard, told news agency RIA-Novosti it wanted to increase by three or four times its trade volumes with Uzbekistan. The statement, while vague on detail, underlines Iran’s potential impact on trade in the region with its re-emergence into the global economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh government said it would subsidise industrial companies that needed to increase salaries to match rising inflation and the falling value of the tenge. The Kazakh government has struggled to manage the economy during difficult economic times.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Chinese Dongfang Electric plans to build a 150 MW thermal power station in Georgia, Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili said during a trip to Beijing. The cost of the project is estimated at around $200m. China has expanded its investments in the South Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan will begin construction on the multi-billion- dollar gas pipeline running from its fields in the east of the country to India in December, Reuters quoted an unnamed government official as saying. This is the strongest indication yet that work is about to being on the so-called TAPI pipeline.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s oil production has fallen by 2.8% in the first eight months of the year, a source at the statistics committee told Reuters.
The data is more economic bad news for Azerbaijan. Oil underpins the economy and a drop in production means a drop in revenue. A regional economic decline has already hit Azerbaijan hard, forcing it to cut government budgets and to devalue its manat currency this year.
The source told Reuters that a decline in output from BP’s Azeri, Chirag and Guneshli (ACG) oilfields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea had pulled its overall output down.
Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev stepped in and ordered BP to stop the output decline at ACG. BP has had sporadic success at stopping the drop in output at ACG, although it has now restarted its slow, steady decline.
Daily oil output at the ACG fell to an average 641,000 barrels/day (bpd) in the first half of 2015 from 656,000 bpd in the same period in 2014 and 661,000 bpd in the first quarter of this year, BP said. ACG makes up most of Azerbaijan’s oil production.
Output at ACG slowed during Q2 when BP closed the West Azeri platform for maintenance. It has now closed the Chirag platform for maintenance. A BP spokesperson said operations at the Chirag oil platform would be suspended from sometime in the autumn. It was not clear when Chirag would re-start operations.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)