NOV. 4 (The Bulletin) — Anglo-Asian Mining, the Azerbaijan-focused gold producer, said that it had found new gold reserves at its Gedabek mine. It said of the new gold reserves that it “identified further mineable extensions giving increased confidence in life of mine”. Anglo Asian Mining is listed on the London Stock Exchange and has seen its share price increase rapidly over the past couple of years.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
NOV. 7 (The Bulletin) — The hospital unit of Georgia Healthcare, the London-listed private clinic and pharmacy operator, said that it had issued a bond worth 50m lari ($16.9m). Georgia Healthcare has been expanding its pharmacy unit and in a statement said that cash raised by the bond sale would go towards refinancing more expensive debt.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
NOV. 5 (The Bulletin) — Lydian International, the Colorado-based mining company, has complained that ministers in Armenia are trying to block it from exploiting the Amular mine in the south of the country once again. It said that a minister has thrown out plans it had put forward on just how much water it planned to take out of the Darb river. Work was stopped at the mine in June 2018 because of various environmental complaints but in October officials greenlighted the project.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
NOV. 7 (The Bulletin) — Banks in Kazakhstan are still giving out risky retail loans, Moody’s the ratings agency said. Bank lending in Kazakhstan is a contentious issue as it has been highlighted as one of the biggest contributors to weakness of the Kazakh economy. Moody’s said that the ratio of retail loans to overall household income will be 2.4 times by mid-2020, the level reached in 2013 just before a recession. Kazakhstan’s Central Bank is the country’s financial supervisor and has tried to impose rules that were supposed to improve lending rules to limit exposure to bed debt.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
NOV. 6 (The Bulletin) — Kazakh energy minister Kanat Bozumbayev said that the budget for expanding the Tengiz oil field was too high, a declaration that sets Kazakhstan’s government at odds with Tengiz’s Western investors. The Tengiz project, which is led by Chevron, is Kazakhstan’s biggest producing oil field. Reports have appeared which have said that it will cost $45.2b to expand Tengiz, up from an initial cost estimate of $36.8b.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
BAKU/NOV. 4 (The Bulletin) — Chevron finalised a deal to sell out of major stakes it owned in Azerbaijan’s oil and gas sector, a reflection of the reduced US corporate interest in the region.
In the deal, Chevron sold its 9.57% stake in the Caspian Sea oil field Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG), Azerbaijan’s biggest oil producing project, and its 8.9% stake in the Baku-Tbilisi Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline for a total of $1.57b to Hungary’s MOL.
The California-based Chevron said in December it wanted to sell its assets in Azerbaijan. ExxonMobil has also said that it wants to sell off its smaller stakes in ACG and BTC.
For MOL, the deal gives it a bigger tie-in with Azerbaijan’s oil and gas sector, less than 12 months before Azerbaijan is due to start pumping gas to central Europe along a network of pipelines stretching from the Caspian Sea via the South Caucasus, Turkey and the Balkans.
“This transaction is an excellent fit to MOL’s current portfolio and the transaction contributes to the further transformation of MOL’s upstream segment into an international business by developing the company’s footprint in its core CIS region,” MOL said in a statement.
The deal is one of the biggest in MOL’s history and will add 20,000 barrels of oil per day to its production ACG has been producing oil since 1997, when the so-called ‘Deal of the century’ was signed between a consortium of Western partners led by BP and the Azerbaijani government.
Over the last eight years or so, its production has been declining, though, frustrating Azerbaijan’s government which has demanded increased investment by the partners.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
Aug. 5 (The Bulletin) — Residents of a Kyrgyz village clashed with Chinese workers at a nearby Chinese-owned gold mine in the east of the country. Reports said that at least 20 people were injured in the fighting. Tension between the gold mine and locals has been rising since the start of July after the death of villagers’ livestock. Farmers blamed the gold mine for polluting the environment. Anti-China sentiment, though, is growing in Kyrgyzstan.
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— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
Aug. 2 (The Bulletin) — The Tajik government said that it setting up a special agency to raise money for its headline Rogun Dam project. In an interview with the Asia-Plus website, finance minister Faiziddin Kahhorzoda said that Tajikistan was looking for grants to pay for the rest of the $3.9b project rather than raising more debt. In 2017 it sold Eurobonds worth $500m to fund the dam.
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— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
Aug. 2 (The Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved a $415m grant to build a major section of a new north-south highway across Georgia. The 23km Kvesheti-Kobi Road is part of a series of upgrades to infrastructure in Georgia that the government has highlighted as a priority.
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— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
TBILISI/July 24 (The Bulletin) — Prosecutors in Georgia charged the chairman and deputy chairman of TBC Bank, the country’s biggest bank, with money laundering.
Mamuka Khazaradze, founder of TBC Bank and chairman of the corporation that owns the bank, and deputy chairman Badri Japaridze denied the charges and said that they were politically motivated.
Prosecutors have been investigating the two men since August last year over payments made through TBC Bank in 2007 and 2008.
They said that there was now enough evidence to charge them with laundering $16.6m “followed by a gain of particular large amounts of income”.
On the London Stock Exchange, TBC’s shares fell more than 11% to a five-month low.
In response, TBC Bank said that Mr Khazaradze and Mr Japaridze had resigned from TBC Bank Group PLC, the company that owns TBC Bank.
Mr Khazaradze had also quit as chairman of the banking unit earlier this year, when news of the investigation became public.
“The Board has full confidence in the integrity of Mr Khazaradze and Mr Japaridze and looks forward to the gentlemen quickly and fully clearing their names of any claims, including alleged money laundering,” TBC said in a statement.
The outspoken Mr Khazaradze, one of Georgia’s most recognisable businessmen, is known to have clashed with Bidzina Ivanishvili, the richest man in Georgia and the power behind the Georgian Dream Coalition government. He has also threatened to go into politics against Mr Ivanishvili and his supporters have said that the money laundering charges are a form of punishment.
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— This story was first published in issue 417 of the weekly Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin on July 25 2019