JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – YouTube is partly inaccessible in Tajikistan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. Asomuddin Atoev, chairman of Tajikistan’s Association of Internet Service Providers, told RFE/RL that some of the country’s internet providers had blocked YouTube. The Tajik authorities have previously blocked websites.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Malaysia’s PM Datuk Razak visited Ashgabat for talks with Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov on how to develop Islamic banking in the Central Asian state.
This is significant because Malaysia is the home of Islamic banking and also because it shows that Turkmenistan may be serious about developing out another section of its economy. Turkmenistan’s new found international status is built on gas exports.
Mr Razak also clearly had an agenda for boosting the presence of Malaysia’s state-owned energy company Petronas in Turkmenistan. Mr Razak said that Petronas had already invested about $8b in Turkmenistan’s energy sector.
“The Turkmenistan President is keen that Malaysia becomes a partner in all areas. This is because his confidence in Malaysia is very high,” Mr Razak said before flying back to Malaysia. “Malaysia has become a priority nation for Turkmenistan.”
Maybe but currently trade outside the oil and gas sector between Malaysia and Turkmenistan is light. Media reported that bilateral trade amounted to just $33m last year and that only 940 Malaysian tourists visited Turkmenistan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – So eager is Georgia to show off its impeccable NATO credentials that it has agreed to retain one battalion of roughly 700 soldiers in Afghanistan next year.
Irakli Alasania, Georgia’s defence minister, announced the news after meeting NATO officials in Europe. This will effectively halve Georgia’s commitments in Afghanistan. At its peak Georgia had over 1,600 soldiers in Afghanistan supporting NATO missions. Twenty-nine Georgian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.
The symbolism is all important. While most NATO member countries are rushing to extract their kit and soldiers from Afghanistan after a long, costly and frustrating campaign, Georgia has applied to remain with the final contingent of US forces.
Georgia is desperate to join NATO, partly as a bulwark against its former colonial overlord Russia with which it fought a brief war in 2008.
But NATO members are being cautious. Although they have shown support for Georgia’s NATO aspirations, and annual military exercises between Georgian and US forces started on June 9, they have also been wary of embracing it too warmly.
Both US President Barack Obama and Herman Chancellor Angela Merkel said that NATO would not offer Georgia membership at its annual conference in Cardiff in September.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – After years of delays, German energy company RWE said it would finally start an evaluation of the Nakhchivan gas and oil deposit in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea.
The announcement is another boost for Azerbaijan’s energy sector which has seen billions of dollars of investments over the past couple of years.
Part of the attractiveness of Azerbaijan’s energy sector is its relative stability and the extra pipeline infrastructure that is being built to send supplies west to Europe.
The Azerbaijani government has been pushing RWE to move ahead with plans to develop the Nakhchivan deposit since the two sides signed a production sharing agreement in 2011.
“We hope to close everything within the next months. . . and to drill our well in the beginning of the next year.” Martin Wellens, the new projects development head at RWE told journalists at an energy conference in Baku.
SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state-owned energy company, had been getting increasingly frustrated with RWE. Media had reported that SOCAR would suspend its product sharing agreement with RWE unless it hurried up its development of Nakhchivan.
Soviet geologists first discovered Nakhchivan in the 1960s but it was not developed as there were more accessible and easier-to-drill wells that could be tapped first.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An appeals court in Atyrau upheld an earlier $730m fine against the consortium developing the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian for environmental damage. The fine was originally imposed for excessive gas flaring after an accident in September 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Kyrgyzstan sent Uchkunbek Tashbayev, the former head of the state agency for geology and mineral resources, to prison for five years for corruption and abuse of office, media reported.The sentence of yet another senior official is a reminder of just how endemic corruption is in Kyrgyzstan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Oil output is still falling at the Azeri, Chirag and Guneshli fields (ACG). A source at SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, said oil output dropped 2.4% in the first five months of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. BP, the operator, had promised to stem the drop at ACG.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Replacing two corroding 90km-long gas pipelines at the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea will cost “several billion dollars” and delay the re-start of production until at least 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported quoting a person familiar with the project.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is enjoying a good run of chasing down his enemies in their overseas hideouts.
Austrian police detained Mr Nazrbayev’s former son-in- law, Rakhat Aliyev, in Vienna, a year after the authorities in France captured Mukhtar Ablyazov, the former chairman of BTA Bank.
Like Ablyazov, Mr Aliyev has been a vocal opponent of Mr Nazarbayev since he fled Kazakhstan in 2007.
Mr Nazarbayev is notorious for allowing his subordinates to enrich themselves but forbidding any challenge to his political powers. Mr Aliyev, who had been married to Mr Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, crossed this line and was forced into exile.
Reports said that he voluntarily turned himself in to the Austrian authorities. The question now is, will Austria extradite Aliyev to Kazakhstan this time?
It’s unlikely as reports have said that Austria has previously declined to act on an extradition request from Kazakhstan. This could be what Mr Aliyev wanted.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing two of its soldiers along the border of the disputed region of Nagorno- Karabakh, raising tension around one of the South Caucasus most delicately-balanced flash-points.
Shootouts are common between the two countries around Nagorno-Karabakh, where a barely discernible peace is held together by a fragile 1994 UN-negotiated cease-fire, but the heightened war-mongering rhetoric from Armenia alarmed international observers.
Azerbaijan denied the accusations.
Both sides are playing to their internal audience. The problem for Armenia is that the rhetoric has serious geopolitical implications.
It wants to join the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union which also counts Belarus and Kazakhstan as members. Armenia has the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Its dispute with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has, though, caused some consternation. Media reported that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev raised objections to Armenia’s membership because of its dispute over Nagorno- Karabakh a the signing ceremony last month.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)