Tag Archives: business

Kazakh Pres. sacks energy minister

MARCH 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked former energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik immediately after a parliamentary election. This was part of a government reshuffle that switched several top-bureaucrats in government and local administrations. Mr Shkolnik, the highest-profile government official to be sacked, was replaced by power sector veteran Kanat Bozumbayev.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Iran wants more Turkmen gas

MARCH 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian official said they wanted to increase gas imports from Turkmenistan to feed its northern region which doesn’t hold any gas reserves. “We import gas from Turkmenistan. It’s good for us because it means that we don’t need to get gas from [the] south to north- east Iran,” Ali Amirani, director at the National Iranian Gas Export Company, was quoted by Interfax Energy as saying. Gas relations between Iran and Turkmenistan are growing stronger and Iran is also mulling joint exploration activities in the border regions.

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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Kazakhstan’s KMG debt worsens

MARCH 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – International ratings agency Fitch said that Kazmunaigas’ adjusted debt ratio for 2015 might be worse than expected. A weak performance by KMG EP, Kazmunaigas’ upstream subsidiary, significantly lower dividends from its joint-ventures and a weaker tenge had combined to dent the company’s finances.

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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Azerbaijan issues $1b Eurobond for gas pipelines

MARCH 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s finance ministry issued a $1b 10-year Eurobond to fund the Southern Gas Corridor company which is building an energy transport route between the Caspian Sea and Europe.

The initial yield on the debt was 7%.

Analysts have said that the rare debt issue for such a high-profile

Azerbaijani energy project is another indication of just how heavily the economic downturn has impacted finances.

The Southern Gas Corridor is a state-owned company in charge of the design and construction of pipelines that will send gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe by 2019. These include TANAP, which will run across Turkey and TAP, which will link Greece to Italy.

The EU considers the project to be a priority for its energy security strategy as it reduces its reliance on Russia for gas. Azerbaijan is hoping to give its gas sector a major lift with the EU as a key client.

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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Smuggling ring busts targeting Georgian oil

MARCH 23 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian authorities broke up an oil smuggling operation near the village of Ruisi in central Georgia, highlighting the lack of security for infrastructures across the South Caucasus.

Smugglers were siphoning off crude oil from the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline, a BP-operated 800km-long pipeline that transports oil from Azerbaijan to the Georgian Black Sea terminal of Supsa.

Smugglers had installed a parallel pipeline that branched off the main trunk and fed trucks.

Major infrastructure projects in the South Caucasus often appear fragile and vulnerable. In November, a fire at a data centre shut down the internet in Azerbaijan.

In 2011, an elderly woman damaged a major fibre- optic cable while digging for copper in a rural Georgian village, cutting internet access in Armenia.

Last year, too, rebels from the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has proclaimed independence, grabbed control of a section of the Baku-Supsa pipeline.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Kazakh Kashagan field to reach commercial production next year

MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Halyk Bank effectively poured cold water over Kazakh officials’ forecasts that the giant Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea would meet commercial production of 75,000 barrels/day this year. Instead, Halyk Bank said that Kashagan would be operating effectively only by the end of 2017. Kashagan is vital for Kazakh oil output.

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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Turkmenistan boosts CNG

MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Turkmenbashi refinery complex plans to produce 340,000 tonnes of compressed natural gas (CNG) this year, a 13% increase compared to 2015. The majority of the production is booked for exports to Georgia, Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Turkmenistan also uses CNG domestically as fuel.

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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Uzbekistan Airways starts flights to Tokyo

MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — State-owned airline Uzbekistan Airways said it started a new weekly service between Tashkent and Tokyo Narita. The company also said the frequency will double to two flights per week from the end of March. Relations between Uzbekistan and Japan have been improving and Japanese businesses are investing heavily in Uzbekistan’s energy and mining sectors.

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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Azerbaijan’s ACG oil output falls

MARCH 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – BP said it expects flat oil output this year from its Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil fields off the coast of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea. Last year, ACG produced 31.3m tonnes of oil, slightly down from 31.5m tonnes in 2014. BP also said it plans two rounds of maintenance later this year. ACG is the mainstay of Azerbaijan’s oil production. Its output has been falling.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)

Armenia reforms stock exchange

MARCH 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Armenian government wants to reform its stock exchange to include currencies and other forms of financial trade. In an interview with Reuters, the director of NASDAQ OMX, Konstantin Saroyan, said: “We are concerned that there are no currency operations on the stock exchange and we are trying to change our business model.” Mr Saroyan also said demand for US dollars has declined due to the economic downturn.

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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)