MAY 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – The EU is worried about a clamp-down on the internet ahead of an election in Azerbaijan later this year, Stefan Fule, the EU’s commissioner for enlargement, said after meeting Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev. Mr Fule also said a deal to improve visa arrangements between the EU and Azerbaijan was nearing.
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(News report from Issue No. 134, published on May 6 2013)
MAY 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian security forces arrested two Azerbaijani scientists in Iran, media reported, increasing tension between the two neighbours. Four other Iranian citizens of Azerbaijani origin were also arrested. Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran have been increasingly strained over the past couple of years.
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(News report from Issue No. 134, published on May 6 2013)
APRIL 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov completed a three day visit to Israel, cementing the two countriesí increasingly close ties. Mr Mammadyarov was the first Azerbaijani foreign minister to visit Israel since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The trip irritated Iran, Azerbaijan’s neighbour.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — SOFAZ, Azerbaijan’s sovereign wealth fund, aims to spend $1b on property in Australia and Asia this year as it diversifies away from Europe, Shakhmar Movsumov, a senior director, told Reuters. SOFAZ made a splash in the international property market in December when it spent $600m in London, Paris and Moscow.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan announced that its foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, would visit Israel on April 22, risking further damage to already strained relations with its neighbour Iran. Mr Mammadyarov will become the first Azerbaijani foreign minister to visit Israel since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
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(News report from Issue No. 132, published on April 22 2013)
APRIL 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Underlining China’s increased dominance across the Central Asia and South Caucasus region, a senior Chinese economic official said that trade with Azerbaijan increased by 17.6% in 2012. Zhang Wei, chairman of China’s Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said that China-Azerbaijan trade was worth $1.2b in 2012.
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(News report from Issue No. 132, published on April 22 2013)
APRIL 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s economy grew by 3.1% in the first three months of the year compared to the same period in 2012, Reuters quoted official data as showing. This rate is far quicker than the first quarter of 2012. Most of the growth occurred outside the energy sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 132, published on April 22 2013)
APRIL 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani police raided the office of the Free Thought University, a prominent pro-democracy group funded by Western organisations, in part of a clamp-down on opposition groups ahead of presidential elections in October. The prosecutor-general’s office said some activists had been arrested but denied that it had closed the group down.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Documents obtained by the whistle-blower website the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists linked Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and his family to several offshore bank accounts in the British Virgin Islands. Opposition in Azerbaijan accuse Mr Aliyev of corruption. He, and his family, declined to comment.
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(News report from Issue No. 130, published on April 5 2013)
MARCH 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — As if waking from a deep slumber and noticing nearby riches to grab, India is slowly buying up energy resources in the Caspian Sea region.
On March 29, Sudhir Vasudeva, head of India’s state-owned energy company ONGC, said that its subsidiary ONGC Videsh had completed the purchase of a 2.72% stake in Azerbaijan’s Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil fields in the Caspian Sea and a 2.36% stake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
ONGC Videsh bought the stakes from the US oil company Hess for $1b. The deal was announced last year. This deal is important as it marks India’s entry into the Caspian Sea energy race.
India needs more energy and has announced an ambitious expansion plan to match; Central Asia and South Caucasus region is an obvious place to expand in to.
But India is playing catch-up. Chinese, Russian and Western energy companies are already entrenched in the region.
That said, India has unveiled impressive plans. It is pushing to build a pipeline from gas fields in Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to south Asia and it has agreed a $5b deal to buy an 8.4% stake in Kashagan, in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea, from US’s Conoco Phillip.
Kazakhstan has yet to approve the Kashagan deal but India’s Caspian Sea intentions are clear.
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(News report from Issue No. 130, published on April 5 2013)