Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan tries to bribe Council of Europe

APRIL 20 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has tried to bribe members of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (Pace) into helping it improve its human rights record, the Guardian newspaper reported citing various officials it had interviewed. Similar claims have been made before against individual members of the Council of Europe which has influence over the human rights lobby.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)

Azerbaijani arms sales hit $101m

APRIL 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijani defence minister Yaver Jamalov estimated that the value of the country’s defence industry was around $101m this year and that it will sell arms and military equipment to 10 countries. Azerbaijan has invested heavily into building up its arms industry. It has boasted that arms it manufactures were used effectively in April 2016 when tension around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh spilled over into battles with Armenia- backed rebels for a couple of days.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

EnerMech secures BP deal in Azerbaijan

APRIL 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Aberdeen-based oil and gas services company EnerMech said that it had won contracts worth £40m ($50m) in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea to manage BP’s crane operations. John Guy, EnerMech’s regional director for the Middle East, Asia and Caspian, said that the company employs 300 people in the region and sees Azerbaijan as an important, and growing, part of its business.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Azerbaijani environmentalist force suspension of gas pipeline

APRIL 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Reuters reported that a court in Italy ordered the halt of construction work on the final segment of a pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to central Europe to protect an olive grove. Protesters have been complaining that the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) would destroy the ancient grove. TAP is part of the $40b Southern Gas Corridor which is seen as a vital piece of infrastructure for the EU’s gas imports. The suspension of construction work is a temporary measure.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Georgia to buy all its gas from Azerbaijan

APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian energy minister Kakha Kaladze said that Georgia would not purchase any more gas from Gazprom until the end of the year and will instead buy all its gas from Azerbaijan. Gas purchases from Gazprom have been controversial for Georgia after it signed a deal at the beginning of the year changing the arrangement from a barter deal to a paid-for deal. Mr Kaladze has refused to name the price agreed with Gazprom for gas purchases, fuelling speculation that he had agreed to pay too high a price. Mr Kaladze has always maintained that the deal gives Georgia more flexibility, including being able to choose how much gas to buy from Gazprom.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Bridge-banks set up to help ailing banking sector in Azerbaijan

APRIL 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijani MPs have passed a law allowing banks weighed down by debt to transfer their good assets to so-called bridge-banks, media reported. The concept, which inadvertently suggests that the Azerbaijani banking crisis is deepening, suggests that these bridge-banks are then able to re- package the sound assets into new banks which can then be sold on. Several small banks have been closed down in Azerbaijan over the past few years and the government this year bought a controlling state in International Bank of Azerbaijan, the country’s largest bank.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Azerbaijan BTC throughput falls

APRIL 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company Socar said that the amount of oil pumped through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) had fallen by more than 11% in the first three months of the year, media reported. The fall is linked to a drop in oil being produced by fields in the region, a drop triggered by the collapse in oil prices from $110/barrel in mid-2014 to under $30/barrel in Jan. 2016 and around $50/barrel now. Azearbaijan has exported less oil via BTC and Kazakh producers have turned to the cheaper CPC pipeline that runs around the Caspian Sea to Novorossiya on Russia’s Black Sea coast.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)f

Trail route from Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey to open in June

MARCH 29 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars rail route, considered a vital piece of infrastructure linking the Caspian Sea to Europe, will officially opened in June, media reported by quoting Turkey’s minister of transport, Ahmet Arslan. The route has been severely delayed. It is primarily designed for goods transport but will also carry passenger sleeper trains.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Azerbaijani president approves tourism plan

MARCH 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev approved an action plan that is designed to boost beach tourism in the country, media reported. The plan will run to 2020 and is designed to improve infrastructure for tourists wanting beach holidays along Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea coast. A sharp fall in the price of oil has forced Azerbaijan to try to diversify its revenue streams.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

First shipment from Kazakhstan arrives in Baku

MARCH 29 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The first shipment of goods from Kazakhstan’s new Kuryk port on the Caspian Sea reached Baku on March 24, a specialist shipping website reported. The port was commissioned in 2014 when the Kazakh economy was looking stronger than it is now. Kuryk is significantly closer to Baku than Aktau, Kazakhstan’s main Caspian Sea port. The freight ship took 18 hours to reach Baku, rather than the normal 22 hours.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)