FEB. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Bucking expectations BP said output from its Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil field in Azerbaijan continued to fall in 2014. BP said oil output at ACG, which is essential to Azerbaijan’s overall output, fell to 31.5m tonnes in 2014 from 32.3m tonnes in 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swiss television reported that Emin Huseynov, a journalist and critic of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, has been hiding in Switzerland’s embassy in Baku for six months. It said Mr Huseynov took refuge in the embassy to avoid being arrested. Human rights groups criticise Azerbaijan’s recent record.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
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.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
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.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
>>Dollar being dropped to counter oil price slip>>
FEB. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan plans to scrap its currency peg to the dollar to ease the impact of falling oil prices, Azerbaijani Central Bank chief, Elman Rustamov, said in an interview with the Financial Times.
The comments appeared to trigger a reaction on the street. Bulletin correspondents reported long queues forming outside exchange booths in Baku the day after the interview was published. People were anticipating another currency devaluation and were trying to exchange their Azerbaijani manat into US dollars.
Like other countries in the region, Azerbaijan has been trying to deal with the fallout from Russia’s tumbling rouble and the decline in oil prices.
One of the major side-effects of the economic turmoil has been an increase in inflation, as Mr Rustamov pointed out in the interview.
“It is critical to make some kind of corrections to fiscal and monetary policy,” he said. “We consider that we should transit to a more flexible exchange rate regime and gradually we will transit to an inflation-targeting regime.”
He didn’t say when the US dollar peg would be dropped but he did say that the new basket would hold more Euros, reflecting more accurately Azerbaijan’s trade make-up. Economists said they expected a gradual decline in the value of the manat of around 1% every month.
And people in Baku are becoming increasingly concerned about economic instability.
Mahammad Qasimli, 57, a school teacher said he was concerned hyperinflation from the mid-1990s may return.
“Every time when there is economic turmoil, the poor suffer the most,” he said.”
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
FEB. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is due to travel to Yerevan and Baku over the next few days to discuss their relations with Washington and how to reduce rising tension along the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Ms Nuland’s trip is part of a wider South Caucasus mission.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
>>Peace accords had been in front of parliament>>
FEB. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan withdrew a series of peace accords relating to the country’s long-running dispute with Turkey.
The move is a major setback for the region as the Armenia-Turkey spat is a hindrance to improved ties and trade with Europe. The two countries’ argue about the alleged mass killings by Turkish Ottoman soldiers of Armenians who were fleeing their land around Lake Van in the east of Turkey.
Mr Sargsyan blamed Turkey for the cancellation.
“We were ready for a fully-fledged settlement in our relations with Turkey by ratifying these protocols, but we were also ready for failure,” media quoted him as saying.
The two countries signed declarations in 2009 to establish diplomatic relations and open a land border.
The problem is that neither the Turkish nor the Armenian parliaments have approved the deals. Nationalists on both sides have instead slowed progress and frustrated efforts.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
FEB. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan jailed two men for spying for Iran, media reported, potentially ramping up tension with its neighbour. Investigators said the two men worked with Iranian intelligence offices in 2013. Relations between the two countries had been dire but have improved over the past year.
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(News report from Issue No. 218, published on Feb. 11 2015)
>>Pres. Aliyev cuts more government spending>>
FEB. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev closed four state bodies in an effort to cut back on government expenses.
Although government officials avoided justifying the disbandment of the state-run companies Bakielektrikshabaka and Azerenerji, which were tasked with generating electricity in Baku and the regions, as well as the State Land and Cartography Committee and Baku Taxes Department, analysts said that cost-cutting was the clear motivator.
“I can’t recall four state bodies being terminated in one week until now,” an Azerbaijani analyst who wanted to keep his identity a secret, told The Bulletin.
“This is definitely about the oil price drop. The government should have done this before. It kept those bodies because of the easy oil money. Now the money is gone, they have had to disband these bodies.”
Ratings agencies have downgraded Azerbaijan’s sovereign debt rating and Mr Aliyev has also talked about reducing government expenditure. Last month it cancelled a multi-million dollar project to extend internet services to rural parts of the country.
Azerbaijan is reliant on energy to generate its income. BP, its biggest foreign investor, has already laid off 8% of its total workforce in Azerbaijan because of the slip in global prices. Oil has halved in value over the last seven months.
Mirvari Gahramanli, an Azerbaijani oil workers’ rights defender, told a local radio programme that the situation was likely to worsen.
“As oil prices go down, we expect more job cut in oil companies. Also, these people will have less chance to find new job places,” she said.
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(News report from Issue No. 218, published on Feb. 11 2015)
FEB. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — SOCAR Cape, a joint venture between Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR and British oil fields services company Cape, have won contracts to work on the Shah Deniz field worth $65m, media reported. Shah Deniz is a one of Azerbaijan’s largest oil fields.
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(News report from Issue No. 218, published on Feb. 11 2015)