MARCH 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has started a 500m euro project to transform an old Yugoslav navy base in Montenegro into a luxury resort. The construction of the resort is controversial because it is being bankrolled by Azerbaijan’s sate-owned oil company and Azmont Investments, a company with close links to the Azerbaijani elite.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The IMF has approved a 38 month loan roughly equal to about $127m to support economic development in Armenia, media reported. Announcing the deal, media quoted Nemat Shafik, deputy managing director of the IMF, as saying that inflation and a large current account deficit were still a worry for Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Officials from Siemens and the German Energy Agency (DENA) met with Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon in Dushanbe to discuss potential cooperation in the sector, giving Tajikistan’s struggling domestic energy sector a potential boost.
Tajikistan relies mainly on hydropower stations to generate much of its power but Mr Rakhmon’s pet project, the Rogun station, lacks investment and has aggravated relations with downstream Uzbekistan, a major cotton-producer.
Every winter, and it gets cold in Tajikistan, villages across the country face rolling blackouts as electricity rationing is introduced.
Last year German-Tajik trade amounted to just under €40.3m, less than a tenth of German-Uzbek trade and dwarfed by German-Kazakh trade which reached over €6.5b.
Perhaps, though, with the visit by Siemens, this is about to change.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran wants to transport Turkmen gas to a port on the Persian Gulf before shipping on to other clients, Hamidreza Araqi, head of the National Iranian Gas Company told Iran’s state news agency in an interview. Turkmenistan has become an increasingly important regional energy hub over the last few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The United States’ Federal Aviation Administration handed Azerbaijan a category 1 ranking, allowing Azerbaijani aircraft to fly to the US. The decision is an important boost for Azerbaijan’s aviation industry. It had previously been banned from flying to the US.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan cut its oil exports by 6.5% in January and February to 3.73m tonnes compared to a year ago, Reuters quoted a source at Azerbaijani energy company SOCAR as saying. The source said that declining output was behind the drop in exports. Azerbaijan has been trying to stem a general decline in oil production.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an echo of the Soviet Union’s efforts to control nature, Turkmenistan’s president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov wants to stop the Amu Darya river freezing over.
According to reports last month, the Turkmen minister for water resources has compiled a report for Mr Berdymukhamedov on how best to stop the mighty Amu Darya, which runs from the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan before fading into the desert just short of the Aral Sea, freezing.
The plan has not been revealed.
The Amu Darya river is particularly important to Turkmenistan as it not only supplies 90% of the country’s drinking water but it also irrigates many of its cotton fields.
Reports of a plan to bend Nature to Man’s will smacks of the Soviet Union. It diverted much water from the Amu Dayra and its sister river the Syr Darya river to irrigate the cotton fields. Its plan was to transform the region into a bread and cotton basket.
It managed this, to an extent, but, in the process, also dried out the Aral Sea.
Now the Amu Darya and Syru Darya rivers are a source of regional tension. They provide downstream Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan with drinking water and irrigation and upstream Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with power.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
FEB. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The ecology department in the Mangistau regional government issued Ozenmunaigas, a subsidiary of Kazakh state-owned energy company Kazmunaigas, a fine of $1.8b for environmental damage. Ozenmunaigas refuted the claim. Environmental fines are sometimes used to pressure companies.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
FEB. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to move out of projects in which it owns only a minority share, Total announced plans to sell its 10% stake in Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz oil field.
Botas, a Turkish pipeline company, confirmed that it is in talks to buy Total’s stake.
There will probably be others interested too. Azerbaijan is an attractive place for countries in the region which need to boost their energy supplies. Last year India’s state-owned ONGC Videsh bought a stake in Azerbaijan’s biggest oil field for $1b.
A Botas spokesman explained the attraction of buying into Shah Deniz. “The acquisition of a 10% stake from Total is commercially profitable,” he told Reuters.
Shah Deniz is the mainstay of Azerbaijan’s gas industry and is currently the subject of a $28b expansion. Some analysts said the cost of the expansion may have triggered Total’s sale plans.
Importantly, a purchase by Botas of Total’s stake would reduce Western Europe’s interest in a gas field which is critical to its long-term energy plans. Azerbaijan has increasingly turned to Turkey, its natural partner, to push through infrastructure and energy projects.
Total is the second major energy company to exit the Shah Deniz project in the Caspian Sea in the past couple of months.
In December, Norway’s Statoil cut its stake in Shah Deniz to 15.5% from 25.5%. Statoil sold this 10% stake for $1.45b to BP and Socar, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, indicating that Total may be able to fetch a similar price for its own stake.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
FEB. 26 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP’s top executive in the Caucasus, Gordon Birrell, told Reuters the consortium exploiting the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil field in the Caspian Sea would invest $2b into the project this year. Azerbaijan has put the BP-led consortium under pressure to stem a decline in oil production at ACG. ACG is the biggest oil field in Azerbaijan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)