JAN. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia met in Paris to discuss a solution to their dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. While little substantial progress was made at the one-day meeting, foreign mediators consider getting Azerbaijan and Armenia to sit across a table as positive.
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(News report from Issue No. 122, published on Feb. 25 2013)
DEC. 17 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s state oil fund, SOFAZ, bought a $285m building in central London, its first significant purchase for its new international property portfolio, media reported. Azerbaijan’s wealth fund is worth an estimated $33b.
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(News report from Issue No. 118, published on Dec. 28 2012)
DEC. 27 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev pardoned and released from jail 87 prisoners, including journalists, human rights activists and political opponents, state media reported. The Azerbaijani authorities have clamped down heavily on their opponents over the past couple of years.
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(News report from Issue No. 118, published on Dec. 28 2012)
DEC. 13 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – In the end, years of on-off negotiations came to nothing when Russia walked away from talks with Azerbaijan on an extension on its lease of a radar station.
Officially, the Qabala radar station in northern Afghanistan was deemed surplus to Russian military requirements. Unofficially, and perhaps more plausibly, the main reason for Russia walking away from a potential deal was its refusal to pay the $150m annual rent that the Azerbaijani government had, apparently, asked for.
That’s what Russian news agency Interfax reported. It said that Russia had been prepared to match an initial fee of $7m a year but that it considered the Azerbaijani demand excessive.
Certainly, the Qabala radar station had been important to the Russian military. It has a range of 6,000km and could detect missiles being fired across the Middle East, a useful thing when tension in the region is rising.
Now though, Russia will have to do without the Soviet-era radar system that only a few years ago it had offered to the US as an alternative to a proposed missile defence system in eastern Europe.
And if the reason touted by the Russian media is true — that Azerbaijan simply pushed up the price too high — it must be another indicator of Azerbaijan’s rising fiscal powers.
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(News report from Issue No. 117, published on Dec. 14 2012)
DEC. 8 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Much to the delight of the Azerbaijani authorities who have been heavily marketing their capital city, Baku will host the inaugural European Olympic Games in 2015. The 41-member European Olympic Committee approved Baku’s bid, it was actually the only application, to hold the event at a meeting in Rome.
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(News report from Issue No. 117, published on Dec. 14 2012)
DEC. 7 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – It is dry, that’s for sure, but Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index is also a decent benchmark of how countries are dealing with corruption in their systems — an issue that foreign investors, local businessmen, politicians and economists follow closely.
The 2012 edition makes for interesting reading on Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
Topping the table for the region is, again, Georgia at 51st place in the 176 country list. Armenia is next at 105th position, alongside the likes of the Philippines and Mexico.
Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan occupy 133 position with Russia and then follows Kyrgyzstan (154) and Tajikistan (157). Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan prop up the table in 170th position. Behind them lie only Somalia, North Korea, Sudan, Afghanistan and Myanmar.
And the big changes from last year? Well, Georgia continues to rise through the ranks, it was placed in 64th position last year, and Armenia has also jumped forward, from 129th in 2011. Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan have also improved their rankings, slightly.
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have remained fairly consistent.
By comparison, though, the biggest faller from the Central Asia and South Caucasus region was Kazakhstan which fell 13 places in the rankings from 120th position in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 116, published on Dec. 7 2012)
DEC. 3 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Baku jailed 4 people for Islamic extremism and for plotting to attack the Eurovision Song Contest held in the Azerbaijani capital in May, media reported. Azerbaijan has said it is battling a threat by foreign-trained Islamists to de-stabilise the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 116, published on Dec. 7 2012)
NOV. 28 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan produced 2.2% less oil in the first 10 months of the year compared to the same period in 2011, official data showed. Gas production also dropped. Azerbaijani officials have heaped most of the blame onto BP which is managing the under-performing Azeri-Chirag- Guneshli Caspian Sea field.
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(News report from Issue No. 115, published on Nov. 30 2012)
NOV. 21 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – A senior official at SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state energy company, hinted that the BP-lead group developing the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) field in the Caspian Sea would be expected to invest more cash into the project to maintain production, media reported. Azerbaijan has complained about below-expected production rates at the field.
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(News report from Issue No. 114, published on Nov. 23 2012)
NOV. 7 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – BP, Statoil and Total have bought stakes in the proposed TANAP pipeline that will pump gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey, media reported. The ultimate market is the EU which has been trying to reduce its dependency on Russia for gas supplies. BP and Statoil will each buy 12% stakes in TANAP and Total will buy 5%.
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(News report from Issue No. 112, published on Nov. 9 2012)