SEPT. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s deputy energy minister, Uzakbai Karabalin, has said fuel shortage will continue despite government attempts to buy extra petrol from Azerbaijan and other neighbours, media reported. He said a third of Kazakhstan’s petrol came from Russia which was dealing with an economic slowdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept. 17 2014)
SEPT. 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s state energy company SOCAR is expected to complete the deal to buy the Greek state gas operator DESFA by the end of this month, SOCAR head Rovnag Abdullayev said. SOCAR agreed to buy a 66% stake in DESFA in 2013. The EU is currently considering it.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
SEPT. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – ran and Kazakhstan have signed deals worth $500m at a joint business forum in Astana, media reported quoting the Kazakh ministry of investment and development. Trade between the two countries is booming, with transport links improving.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
I
SEPT. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan may be about to play an unforeseen, but important, role in Ukraine’s civil war.
Virtually unnoticed by the media, Ukraine’s coal and energy minister, Yuriy Proban, visited Baku for an unofficial meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart. He was, basically, asking for help from Azerbaijan.
Ukraine’s economy is a mess. It had been reliant on coal mining from the Donbass region but with the civil war centred on Donbass, it is now limping along.
It had also earned a substantial fee for being a transit country for oil and gas supplies from Russia to Europe. That too has dried up, meaning that it both has to generate cash from elsewhere and also buy in oil and petrol.
According to analysts, only about 20% of Ukraine’s refining capacity is currently in use.
And this where Azerbaijan, could in theory, come in.
Mr Probin said that he was in Baku partially to ask for Azerbaijan to halp make up the shortfall.
“We could quite quickly increase the processed amounts if Azerbaijan has the available resources,” Russian news agency ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying, referring to the volumes of refined oil produced in Ukraine.
For Azerbaijan, there are two main issues to consider before potentially increasing supplies to Ukraine. Firstly, how to get any oil shipments there, possibly via Georgia’s Black Sea port of Batumi, and secondly how would Russia react? Azerbaijan-Russia relations are already strained. Supplying Ukraine with oil, may strain them further.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Highlighting its break from Turkmen gas imports, Iran opened what it said was the largest liquefied natural gas storage depot in the world in the north of the country. Iran has said that it wants to reduce expensive gas imports from Turkmenistan, which has propelled itself into the top tier of world gas producers.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An armed group attacked a Chinese- run gold mine in northern Kyrgyzstan shooting a security guard and making off with 5kg of gold, media reported. The attack highlights still weak security across swathes of the country. Gold mines are a particular target.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway link will be opened shortly, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev was quoted by media as saying. The rail link between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and Iran has been touted as a major advance for trade between Iran and Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian president Vladimir Putin and Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev are expected to sign a deal soon that will allow the movement of arms between the two countries more easily, media reported. The agreement is designed to increase arms trade between Kazakhstan and Russia as well as deepen military integration.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a thinly veiled warning to the BP-led ACG oilfields, Rovnag Abdullayev, head of Azerbaijani energy company SOCAR, said he expected its output to hit 30m tonnes this year and next year. ACG is key to Azerbaijan’s oil wealth but output has been falling.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Westport Trading, a US-company, is setting up a processing plant to process high-quality bitumen in the port city of Seidi in Turkmenistan, media reported quoting the Turkmen government newspaper.
Bitumen is a major component for tar production used in road-building and setting up a major factory that is not dominated oil and gas production would be a boost to Turkmenistan’s promise to diversify its economy.
The $78m that the plant will reportedly cost will also generate much needed jobs.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)