Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Domestic oil consumption grows in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan

JUNE 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The figures in the BP Statistical Review of World Energy can be dry but the stories behind the figures are important.

The 2013 edition is an important barometer for the energy-centric economies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. The most telling figure for the region in this year’s edition of the review was that oil consumption in Kazakhstan grew by over 10% in 2012.

This is a large jump. In the countries covered in the review only Israel’s oil consumption increased at a higher rate. The global rise in oil consumption in 2012 was 0.9%.

The increase reflects Kazakhstan’s emergence from a sharp economic retraction triggered by the global crisis of 2008/9 when oil consumption fell.

Last year Kazakhstan, with a population of 17m, consumed 265,000 barrels of oil per day. By comparison, Uzbekistan, population 29.5m, consumed 82,000 barrels/day and Turkmenistan, population 5m, consumed 100,000 barrels/day.

Across the Caspian Sea, BP reported that Azerbaijan, population 9.3m, consumed 93,000 barrels of oil per day, a jump of 5.4%. This rise in Azerbaijan’s oil consumption, although not as big as Kazakhstan’s leap, still shows an increase in economic activity.

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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)

Academic returns to Azerbaijan

JUNE 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Khalida Ismayilova, an Azerbaijani academic, and Shamkhal Huseynov, her driver, returned to Azerbaijan after weeks in Iranian detention. The Iranian authorities detained Ms Ismayilova and Mr Huseynov in Tabriz on April 30. Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran have been increasingly strained.

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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)

Aliyev runs for president in Azerbaijan

JUNE 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s ruling New Azerbaijan Party nominated President Ilham Aliyev as its candidate in a presidential election set for October. Mr Aliyev took over as president from his father in Oct. 2003 and is expected to win a third term. A constitutional amendment scrapped a two-term limit in 2009.

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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)

Azerbaijani refugees shown in photo exhibition

BRADFORD/England, JUNE 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — As gritty as ever, Azerbaijani photographer Reni Effendi uses a series of photos on three different subjects to highlight the fragility of life on the fringes.

The “Liquid Land: Legacies of oil and power” exhibition at the Impressions Gallery in Bradford, northern England, starts with portraits of elderly women eking out life in their radiation-stained homes near the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine. A nuclear reactor at the plant exploded on April 26 1986 throwing radiation over the surrounding countryside.

But this is just the warm-up, for you feel the point that Ms Effendi really wants to make is about her native country, Azerbaijan.

The second half of the exhibition displays portraits of refugees in Azerbaijan. Children pose as they go to school, a man relaxes in the bath. They are ordinary poses of a marginalised people struggling through everyday life.

Dotted between the portraits of the refugees are photographs taken from her father’s old collection of pictures of butterflies. Ms Effendi chose photographs of butterflies which are either on the brink of extinction or have been killed off altogether.

More insight into the refugees and their plight would have helped the social commentary, but the symbolism is powerful and does work.

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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)

HRW accuses Azerbaijan of framing opposition

MAY 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Azerbaijani authorities of planting drugs on opposition politicians to imprison them. According to the HRW press release, the drug plants are part of crack-down against civil society ahead of a presidential election in October.

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(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)

OMV sells Nabucco stake

MAY 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Austria’s OMV has agreed to sell a 9% stake in the company planning to build the proposed Nabucco gas pipeline from the Shah Deniz II gas field in Azerbaijan to Europe. France’s GDF Suez agreed to buy the stake for an undisclosed amount. The consortium developing Shah Deniz II will decide whether to use Nabucco or a rival to deliver gas to Europe.

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(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)

Tesco to expand in Kazakhstan and the Caucasus

MAY 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Consumer markets in Central Asia and the South Caucasus region are maturing, as Tesco, the British supermarket chain, has realised.

Or at least, consumer markets in some of the region’s countries are maturing.

Tesco’s clothing department, which trades under the brand name F&F, announced that it planned to open various franchise stores across the Middle East, Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

Specifically it said that F&F would open a store in Astana, the Kazakh capital by the end of June, to be followed by stores in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

These will be opened through franchise agreements with Saudi Arabia-based Al Hokair and Dubai-based Futtaim.

The deal and Tesco’s intention to expand across Central Asia and the South Caucasus is important as it acts as further evidence that consumer demand in these markets is changing.

Long associated with the luxury market, Western high street brands have moved into Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, over the past couple of years and now, with the arrival of Tesco, it appears that discount brands are following.

(News report from Issue No. 136, published on May 27 2013)

Azerbaijan’s SOFAZ buys into VTB

MAY 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Alongside the sovereign wealth funds of Qatar and Norway and the China Construction Bank, Azerbaijan’s State Oil Fund (SOFAZ) bought part of a $3.3b stake in Russian bank VTB, the bank told local media. The deal again shows just how much wealth Azerbaijan has at its disposal.

(News report from Issue No. 136, published on May 27 2013)

Azerbaijan to finance new refinery in Turkey

MAY 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, said it would borrow $4b to part-finance an ambitious new oil refinery in Turkey, only 10 days after figures showed slowing output at its most important oil field.

The refinery, to be built in western Turkey, will be operational by 2016 and produce 10m tonnes of oil a year. The $4b loan will cover around two-thirds of the construction costs.

SOCAR will fund the rest of the project itself.

Azerbaijan’s wealth is anchored to its energy industry and the refinery plan projects both a confidence about the future and an understanding of its most important market — Europe.

The importance of Europe as Azerbaijan’s main market was underlined when the European Commission approved plans to build a pipeline to pump gas from Azerbaijan across the Adriatic to Italy, on May 17.

A few days earlier, though, on May 7, BP announced that production at the main oil field in the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea, Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG), was still falling. Bloomberg reported that production at ACG, which produces three-quarters of the country’s oil, had dropped to 662,000 barrels per day in Q1, a fall of 8.4% from a year earlier.

(News report from Issue No. 135, published on May 20 2013)

Azerbaijan passes new internet law

MAY 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ahead of a presidential election in October, parliamentarians in Azerbaijan passed a law that makes defamation on the internet a crime punishable with a prison sentence. Human rights groups criticised the move as political and said it effectively criminalised free speech on the internet.

(News report from Issue No. 135, published on May 20 2013)