Tag Archives: business

Georgia to build ski resort

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Georgian government said the development of the Gudauri ski area will cost around $150m to build, the first time that a price tag has been put on plans to give the country what officials say will be a world-class winter sports resort. Canadian mountain resort developers Ecosign and consulting firm Ernst&Young have drawn up plans to develop infrastructure at Gudauri, a ski resort around 120km north of Tbilisi. The government’s Partnership Fund is set to be one of the biggest investors in the project.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Stock market: Tethys, Nostrum, Tengri

DEC. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Commodities prices keep declining and the industry continues to worry and use caution. This is reflected in the markets, which show the poor performance of Central Asia and South Caucasus focused firms.

Tethys Petroleum (-6% in the past week), Nostrum Oil & Gas (-5.8%) and Roxi Petroleum (-4%) were hit by oil prices plummeting to around $37/barrel.

Industrial and judicial news affected the performance of several miners in the region.

KAZ Minerals closed at 88.5p on Thursday a 7.7% fall in share prices compared to last week. Centerra Gold lost 11% on the Toronto Stock Exchange, closing at 7.07 Canadian dollars on Thursday.

Generally stable Tengri Resources also fell after it announced it was not going to mine the Taldybulak gold and copper project in Kyrgyzstan. It lost 17.4% in one day to close at 3p per share on Thursday.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

GM prices up in Uzbekistan

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — GM-Uzbekistan, General Motors car-making venture in Uzbekistan, increased retail prices across its product line by up to 30%, the podrobno.uz news agency reported. Like the rest of the region, Uzbekistan has been facing a devaluation in its sum currency while inflation has increased.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Iran hints at increasing stake in the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran has said it is interested in increasing its stake in the Shah Deniz offshore gas exploration project in Azerbaijan, a move that would extend Iran’s influence over a project that is becoming increasingly important in Europe’s future energy plans.

Iran’s deputy minister Hossein Zamani Nia said Iran wanted to increase its stake in several international projects. “Several fields and projects in some countries are being examined,” Mr Zamani Nia told the IRNA news agency.

“Shah Deniz is one of those fields but a final decision has not yet been made.”

Through the subsidiary Naftiran Intertrade, state-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) owns a 10% stake in Shah Deniz, off the coast of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea.

BP is the project leader at Shah Deniz with a 28.8% share in the consortium. Turkey’s TPAO owns 19%, Azerbaijan’s SOCAR owns 16.7%, Malaysia’s Petronas controls 15.5% and Lukoil owns the remaining 10%.

The consortium is working on a second development phase of the project, which will more than double the field’s output.

The additional volumes will fill new westward pipelines, such as TANAP, which will pump gas to Turkey and Europe.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

China buys controlling stake in major Kazmunaigas subsidiary

DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — China’s CEFC energy company will buy a controlling stake in KMG Inter- national, a subsidiary of Kazmunaigas, in a deal that helps Kazakhstan raise cash but also rids Western investors of one of the more interesting companies previously offered up by Kazakh officials as a potential IPO target.

The deal, which will give CEFC a 51% share in the Netherlands-based company, is valued at between $500m and $1b, sources told Reuters.

KMG International, formerly called Rompetrol, owns the Petromidia Navodari refinery and hundreds of petrol stations in Romania, Georgia, Bulgaria and Moldova.

It is affiliated with Switzerland- based KMG Trading, which secured a $3b deal in December with Vitol as the buyer of future oil shipments from Kazmunaigas’ 20% share of the Tengizchevroil consortium.

Neither KMG International nor KMG Trading could be reached for comment.

Kazmunaigas has unsuccessfully tried to sell off Rompetrol-owned assets over the past few years.

Samruk-Kazyna, Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund which owns Kazmunaigas, had said it wanted to sell KMG International in a round of privatisation set for 2016. Now, the privatisation of KMG International seems to have fallen out of this IPO bucket list.

Kazakhstan has said it wants to sell off state-owned companies involved in midstream and downstream operations in an effort to raise much-needed cash to restore financial stability during what has become a sustained downturn in oil prices.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Azerbaijan extinguishes Caspian Sea fire

DEC. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Azerbaijan said they had finally extinguished the fire at Platform No. 10 of the Guneshli shallow water oil rig off the coast of Baku, nearly two weeks after a storm smashed into it causing an explosion in a gas pipe.

Emergency crews also said they had received permission to search for the bodies of 26 missing oil workers from other littoral states bordering the Caspian Sea.

Three workers from the Oil Rocks platform and 23 workers from the Guneshli platform are still listed as missing.

Rescue teams have already found the bodies of seven workers killed in the fire on Dec. 4.

A final death toll of 33 would make it the worst offshore oil platform accident since the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988 when 167 people were killed.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Deutag wins contracts in Azerbaijan

DEC. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — British services company KCA Deutag won two contracts with BP worth up to $1b for operations, maintenance and engineering work in Azerbaijan. The Aberdeen-based company will work on seven oil and gas platforms operated by BP off the coast of Azerbaijan, including those exploiting the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field and the Shah Deniz gas field, two of Azerbaijan’s most important energy projects. KCA Deutag has worked in Azerbaijan for 20 years, mostly with BP. Rune Lorentzen, president of Offshore at KCA Deutag, said: “These major contract awards build on KCA Deutag’s long standing relationship with BP, and recognise our efforts to deliver both continuous improvement and value to our client.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Azerbaijan to receive Swiss trains

DEC. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swiss railway manufacturer Stadler will deliver two high-speed electric trains to Azerbaijan in the next two months, Javid Gurbanov, head of Azerbaijani Railways, told reporters. Both trains will be used on the 30km Baku-Sumgayit route. In May, Stadler said it had also won a €70m contract to deliver five double decker carriages to Azerbaijan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Tengri drops Kyrgyz project

DEC. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-listed Tengri Resources said two mines it has been exploring in Kyrgyzstan “host large resources with significant upside exploration potential” but that it won’t exploit them because of low commodity prices. Tengri Resources’ shares fell 17.4% to 3p, a 9 month low, after the announcement. The company had been exploring the Taldybulak and the nearby Andash mines. Gold prices have fallen by 11% this year and copper prices by 25%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)

Kazakh businessman buys controlling stake in BTA Bank Ukraine

DEC. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ukraine’s Antimonopoly Committee gave permission to Kazakh businessman Kenes Rakishev to buy a majority stake in BTA Bank Ukraine, strengthening his control over Kazakhstan’s banking assets.

One day before disclosing Mr Rakishev as the mystery buyer, the Ukrainian regulator said it had given the green light to a citizen of Kazakhstan to buy the 50.007% stake in BTA Bank that Kazkommertsbank, Kazakhstan’s largest lender, didn’t already own.

Kazkommertsbank and Mr Rakishev completed the takeover of BTA Bank in Kazakhstan earlier in 2015.

This takeover deal, though, only concerned the Kazakhstan-based parent company. BTA Group also owns banks in Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey and Ukraine.

Now, Mr Rakishev will control BTA’s subsidiary in Ukraine, buying it from Andryi Levkovsky, a Ukrainian businessman linked to several investment companies.

The 36-year-old Mr Rakishev is the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s powerful defence minister Imangali Tasmagambetov and is considered a member of the country’s most inner clique of elite.

BTA Bank Ukraine’s results in the first three quarters of the year were positive. Net income grew by 30% to $119,800, making the bank a small player in Ukrainian market. The bank’s total assets amount to 2.8b hryvnia ($120m).

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)