Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan readying a 2nd Eurobond

JUNE 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned Southern Gas Corridor company said it will issue a second $1b Eurobond by the end of 2016 or early next year, Bloomberg reported. The Southern Gas Corridor, which is in charge of a pipeline network that will connect Azerbaijan’s gas fields with European consumers by 2019, issued a $1b Eurobond in March. Sustained low oil prices have hit the financial feasibility of several large infrastructure projects across the region.

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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)

IMF improves forecast for Azerbaijan’s shrinking GDP

JUNE 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s GDP will shrink by 2.4% in 2016, the IMF said in a statement after it sent a mission to Baku. The IMF improved its forecast, which had previously said that Azerbaijan’s GDP would fall by 3% this year. Sustained low oil prices have hit Azerbaijan’s growth. The IMF has urged structural reforms to accelerate the country’s diversification objectives but the Azerbaijani economy has remained stubbornly addicted to oil.

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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)

Azerbaijan’s energy company to make agreement with India

MAY 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — India’s state-owned ONGC Videsh said it had entered into a preliminary agreement with SOCAR Trading, the Geneva-based branch of Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR, to jointly sell oil it produces in Azerbaijan. Since 2013, ONGC Videsh has owned a 2.7% stake in the Azeri Chirag-Guneshli offshore oil project in Azerbaijan.

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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)

Azerbaijani President to bail out mining company

MAY 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said that the state was ready to buy the Aimroc mining company, which is alleged to be linked to his family. The company closed in 2014, as it ran into financial difficulties exploiting the Chovdar mine in western Azerbaijan. Aimroc’s name appeared in numerous investigations that linked its opaque offshore business to the presidential family. By presidential decree state-owned Azerigold will take over Aimroc.

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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)

SOCAR’s finances falter

JUNE 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In 2016, Azerbaijan found itself in the midst of a crisis that it had tried to ignore for months. Low oil prices hit both revenues and investment opportunities for SOCAR, the state-owned energy company.

It is now trying to cut expenditures and raise cash through bonds and loans for its main projects. In Turkey, SOCAR’s subsidiary is divesting from a large petrochemical complex and readying for an IPO, in an effort to go full-steam into the Southern Gas Corridor business.

And Turkey is a key partner in the pipeline game, as it will become the gateway for Azerbaijani gas to Europe.

Now, though, SOCAR faces a problem. It can either diversify its portfolio, cut investments and wait for sunnier days or go ahead and pour cash — borrowed cash — into the US and Europe’s pet pipeline project.

Little does it matter that US President Barack Obama and British PM David Cameron both sent kind words to Azerbaijan’s international energy conference this week. SOCAR still has a problem.

But if it invests disproportionately into infrastructure, it might not have enough to ensure that production upstream is steady enough to fill the pipelines, which would be a repeat, though a much faster one, of the fate of the BTC oil pipeline, now constantly used below capacity.

The incessant movements, even marginal, in foreign markets in the past few months reveal how shaky SOCAR’s position is. Last week it closed representative offices in three countries to save money. But that won’t be enough to pay back the gamble it has taken with all the outstanding loans and bonds to build the West’s dream pipeline.

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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)

Azerbaijan to pay compensation for ill-treatment of political prisoners

JUNE 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Court of Human Rights said the Azerbaijani government should pay €15,000 ($17,000) compensation to both Leyla and Arif Yunus, two former political prisoners, for providing “inadequate medical treatment”. The couple, freed in April to seek urgent medical care, had spent more than a year in prison on what rights activists called trumped up charges. The Yunuses have now sought asylum in the Netherlands.

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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)

Azerbaijan’s minister urges AZAL to pay depts

MAY 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s ministry of finance urged AZAL, the national airline, to start paying back its debts and cut costs. Finance minister Samir Sharifov said that in order to buy new aircrafts AZAL has accumulated over 650m manat ($450m) in state-guaranteed loans, which could become a burden to the state budget if AZAL becomes insolvent. Several state-owned and private companies in Azerbaijan have increased their borrowings as an economic downturn hits profits.

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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)

Azerbaijan’s oil company cuts costs

MAY 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company SOCAR said it had closed three of its representative offices abroad, in an attempt to cut costs during a period of sustained low oil prices. Rovnag Abdullayev, SOCAR’s CEO said the company shut offices in Switzerland, Belgium and Germany. Importantly, these are just the representative offices, the offices of SOCAR’s subsidiaries will remain open. SOCAR is one of Azerbaijan’s biggest brands. For it to close offices means that the government is feeling the pinch economically.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Azerbaijan’s oil company to build new refinery

MAY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company, said it will build a new oil refinery in Kulevi, on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, near its existing oil terminal. SOCAR said it has agreed with Georgian authorties to build the plant by the end of 2019. The refinery will cost $120m to build and will have a capacity of 2m tonnes/year.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

Khadija Ismayilova: Investigative journalist

MAY 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Beaming from ear to ear, Khadija Ismayilova blinked and smiled. It was Wednesday and Ms Ismayilova’s first taste of freedom after 537 days in prison for charges that she and her supporters have said were politically motivated.

In those 537 days, Ms Ismayilova has been transformed from a journalist known locally for her hard-hitting investigative reports that exposed corrupt schemes linked to President Ilham Aliyev to the international face of the fight for freedom of speech in Azerbaijan.

Her resilience and determination not to back down under intense pressure from the government and other dark forces, including a series of blackmail threats in 2012 linked to sex tapes made of her, won her many admirers in the West.

John McCain, a former US presidential candidate, was among the high- profile list of politicians from around the world who have been campaigning for Ms Ismayilova’s release.

After she was freed he said: “Khadija has played a critical role in uncovering government corruption and holding authorities accountable, and her commitment to freedom of the press and human rights serves as an inspiration for journalists everywhere.”

And this work has been recognised by a string of institutions who have given Ms Ismayilova various awards including the prestigious PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award and the Anna Politkovskaya Award. Both these awards are for reporters who focus on anti-corruption issues and human rights.

And Ms Ismayilova, who turns 40 on May 27, has already said that she plans to continue her work, despite the dangers.

“Regarding my plans for journalism, I am going to continue my investigations,” she said in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio

Liberty. “There is always a lot of work to do in a country like Azerbaijan where corruption is on such a massive scale.”

In Ms Ismayilova, President Aliyev and his cohort of supporters have found a dogged and determined anti-corruption opponent.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)