Tag Archives: business

Armenian airline makes maiden flight

MARCH 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia, a new low-cost airline, will make its maiden flight from Yerevan to Tel Aviv on April 21, media reported quoting Robert Hovhannisyan, one of the airlines shareholders. Speculation has been growing in Armenia about whether the low-cost airline will get off the ground. It biggest shareholder is Tamaz Gaiashvili, the founder of the Georgian Airzena airline.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

KBR wins refinery contract in Azerbaijan

MARCH 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – US-based engineering company KBR said its joint venture in Azerbaijan had won a project management consulting contract for the Heydar Aliyev oil refinery near Baku. SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state owned energy company, is a partner in the joint venture with KBR. The companies did not disclose the value of the contract.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Armenian hydro snatches market share

MARCH 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s overall electricity production was 5.2% higher in January compared to January 2015, mostly due to the sharp increase in hydropower generation.

While traditional sources of power such as thermal and nuclear increased only marginally, production from hydropower and small hydropower stations grew by 23.7%, according to Armenia’s Statistics Committee.

Small hydroelectric plants, in particular, have heavily increased their contribution to Armenia’s total power output.

Small hydropower plants are defined in Armenia as power plants that generate up to 30 MW. In Armenia there are now 173 small hydropower plants, more than twice as many as there were in 2010 and six times more than in 1991. Today, they account for around 9% of the country’s power generation.

Individual entrepreneurs, including many people linked to government officials and ministers, have driven the rise in these small hydro- power stations, building along rivers and generating power which links straight into the national grid.

But while the government has welcomed the rise in small hydro- power stations, anti-corruption campaigners have linked them to money laundering and corruption and environmentalists have said that they are damaging rivers’ eco-systems and creating eye-sores.

“Critics say the plants already in operation are sucking up most of the water in the river system, destroying traditional trout fisheries and depriving area residents of reliable access to water,” Kristine Aghalaryan said in report in the Hetq newspaper.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Azerbaijan’s Azerkimya signs contract with Technip

MARCH 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Technip Italy and Azerkimya signed an agreement for the reconstruction of the Sumgayit ethylene-polyethylene plant, 30km north of Baku. Technip Italy is a subsidiary of France’s Technip, an oil service company, which left Azerbaijan in January. Azerkimya is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Kazakh Tele2 receives credit line

MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh mobile operator Tele2 signed an agreement for a long-term credit line with Kazkommertsbank, one of the country’s largest commercial banks. The company will use the funds to upgrade its network. Tele2 Kazakhstan and Altel completed their merger on March 1. Before the market was liberalised earlier this year, Altel, a subsidiary of state owned Kazakhtelecom, was the only company to own a 4G licence in Kazakhstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Italy charges company with corruption at Kazakhstan’s Kashagan

MARCH 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Italian prosecutors charged Dinamo, an energy consortium registered near Milan, with paying millions of euros in bribes to Kazakh officials for a contract to service the giant Kashagan oil field.

The bribes, the prosecutors said, are part of a deep-rooted system of corruption used to win contracts in the oil services sector around the world. So far, ENI, Italy’s biggest energy firm, has not been involved in the legal proceedings, but analysts argue that the investigation might inevitably reach the former operator of Kashagan.

ENI holds a 16.8% stake in the Kashagan consortium of which Kazmunaigas, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, CNPC and Inpex are all part.

Italy is one of Kazakhstan’s main trade partners. Kashagan is supposed to start commercial oil production later this year after a three year delay.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Oil workers strike in Kazakhstan

MARCH 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – About 200 people working for the oil services company Techno Trading, which is a sub-contractor for Mangistaumunaigas went on strike. They complained that the company had not paid them their quarterly bonuses. Industrial action is a sensitive issue in western Kazakhstan where police and demonstrators clashed in 2011, killing at least 14 people. Inflation is rising and the value of the tenge has dropped in Kazakhstan, straining worker-employer relations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Malaysia buys up field in Kazakhstan

MARCH 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Malaysia’s Reach Energy Berhad said it offered $154.9m for a 60% stake in Palaeontol B.V., a Dutch-registered company that operates an onshore block in the Mangistau oblast in Western Kazakhstan. The fields in the block are known as Emir Oil. China’s MIE Holdings Corp owns Palaeontol. According to Reach Energy, the fields holds oil reserves of 10m tonnes.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Norway asks Tajikistan about TALCO’s ownership

MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Norway’s parliament challenged the Tajik government to reveal exactly who was the real beneficiary behind the TALCO aluminium smelter company. Newspaper reports have focused on potential corruption at the plant and in deals that included Norway’s part-state owned Norsk Hydro.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Greenfields buys field in Azerbaijan

MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a $57.6m deal, Houston-based Greenfields Petroleum agreed to buy the 66% of Bahar Energy, an energy company exploiting the offshore Bahar oilfield, that it didn’t already own from Azerbaijan’s Baghlan Group. Bahar Energy, registered in Dubai, operates the field with Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR. Upon the completion of the $57.6m deal, Greenfields Petroleum will own 100% of Bahar Energy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)