Category Archives: Uncategorised

Turkmenistan offers to host Afghan peace talks

MARCH 18 2015 (The Bulletin) – Turkmenistan has offered to host talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, Pakistan’s Express Tribune newspaper reported. Sapar Berdiniyazov, a senior Turkmen diplomat, said: “If the Afghan parties ask us, Turkmenistan is available as a venue for the talks.” If Ashagbat did ever host peace talks it would significantly raise its international profile.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)

Kazakhstan cuts oil export tax

>>Slump in global oil prices triggers tax cut>>

FEB. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will slash its oil export duty by 25% to help companies manage a sharp drop in energy prices, economy minister Yerbolat Dossayev said.

The measure is part of a package of proposals designed to help Kazakhstan’s economy weather an increasingly nasty economic downturn. Energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik also said that taxes on miners would be cut soon.

Currently oil exporters pay $80 to ship a tonne of oil out of Kazakhstan. The government will cut this to $60.

It’s a drastic step for Kazakhstan which still relies heavily on oil exports for its revenue. Drastic but, possibly, unavoidable. Oil prices have halved in the past seven months, forcing spending cut backs and budget cuts.

The sharp drop in oil prices also creates another problem for Kazakhstan. It makes the more expensive projects, such as the Kashagan project in the Caspian Sea, unprofitable. Dropping export tax may go some way to addressing this problem.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Lukoil invests in Uzbekistan

FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian energy company LukOil said that along with a consortium headed by South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering it had won a contract to build a gas processing plant in the Kandym region of south Uzbekistan. LukOil did not say how much the project would cost but it did say that it was its largest investment in Uzbekistan.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

New charges against reporter

FEB. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Azerbaijan have brought new charges against RFE/RL reporter Khadija Ismayilova, media reported. Ms Ismayilova, a critic of the government, is in pre-trial detention for coaxing a journalist into a suicide attempt. She will now also face charges of tax evasion and embezzlement.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

France seizes Karimova’s property

FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The French authorities have seized properties worth millions of euros belonging to Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, media reported. One of the properties was an estate near Paris which had its own opera house. Ms Karimova, once a potential presidential successor, is under house arrest in Tashkent.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Top TALCO manager sacked

FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s president Emomali Rakhmon sacked the managing-director at TALCO, the company that runs its aluminium smelter, media reported. No official reason was given for sacking Sadriddin Sharipov from TALCO which generates around 70% of Tajikistan’s foreign earnings.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Tengiz output to rise

FEB. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tengizchevroil, a Kazakh joint-venture with Chevron, is expected to boost oil output by 42% to 38m tonnes by 2021, Kazakh energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik said. This is important news for Kazakhstan as Tengizchevroil is its biggest single oil producer.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Turkmenistan criticises Russia

>>Criticism comes after Russia cuts Turkmen gas imports>>

FEB. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan has criticised Russia as an unreliable gas partner, hinting that it was moving away from its traditional energy alliance with Moscow and was instead looking for new clients and markets.

Ties between Turkmenistan and Russia have been increasingly strained and, perhaps, the Kremlin’s shadow boxing with the West in eastern Ukraine persuaded it to issue the harshly worded statement and speed up its search for new clients.

“Gazprom and its affiliates periodically violate agreements at interstate, intergovernmental and interdepartmental level, leading to the view that unfortunately the major energy company is an unstable partner,” the AFP news agency reported quoting an article on the website of Turkmenistan’s oil and gas ministry.

Earlier this year, Gazprom said that it was cutting imports of gas from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan by up to two-thirds.

Like other countries in the region, Turkmenistan has been trying to deal with the fallout from the decline in the value of the rouble and also the fall in energy prices. President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has ordered his energy executives to search for more clients.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Azerbaijan oil output rises

FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Oil output in Azerbaijan rose for the first time in a year, Reuters quoted an Azerbaijani official as saying. The official, who declined to be named, said the increase was due to a rise in production at the ACG fields operated by BP.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Armenia opposition say they are harrassed

FEB. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gagik Tsarikian, head of the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party, has accused the government of harassing his staff and sacking police tasked with defending his property, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Mr Tsarikian said President Serzh Sargsyan ordered the tax police to close his operations.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)