MAY 15 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will open its much-vaunted uranium bank on Aug. 17, media reported quoting MP Kanat Bozumbaev. The uranium bank has been authorized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and is designed to act as a resource for countries that want to develop nuclear energy. Kazakhstan is the world’s largest uranium producer.
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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)
MAY 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A unit of the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) signed deals to boost financing of small and medium-sized businesses in Uzbekistan with two Tashkent-based banks, Ipak Yuli and Asia Alli- ance. The deals continue the sense of openness and development that President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has ushered into Uzbekistan since taking over as president in September 2016. Earlier this year, he welcomed the head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) back to Tashkent for the first time since 2003. This month the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Uzbekistan for the first time.
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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)
MAY 17 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Pony Express, a Russian logistics company, said that it had opened up an office in Azerbaijan to take advantage of the opportunities that it expects major transport routes to generate. Media quoted regional development director Sergey Sergushev as saying that the development of a North-South transport corridor linking India, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia, as well as the already established trans-Cas- pian Sea route, would boost demand for logistic services in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has been trying to position itself as a major link between Europe and Asia and companies such as Pony Express moving in will be a boost to its aspirations.
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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)
MAY 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Aktau port, the busiest Kazakh Caspian Sea port, will be privatised by the end of the year, Temir Zholy, the state railway company which currently owns it, said in a note. Kazakhstan is pushing ahead with a number of high profile privatisation projects. Aktau port will be viewed as a valuable asset as it is the main gateway for goods being sent between Asia and Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
MAY 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A consortium lead by Denmark- based Blue Water Shipping has won a cargo contract to transport equipment to the Tengizchevroil project in Kazakhstan through a network of rivers and canals in Russia, the company said. Tengizchevroil is the consortium running the Tengiz oil project. It has committed to an $36.8b expansion plan. This is generating business for a number of companies in Kazakhstan. Included in the Blue Water Shipping consortium is Dubai-based Manchester Shipping.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a boost for its ambitions to become the region’s top gas exporter, Turkmenistan said that it had discovered a potentially large gas field near the Caspian Sea.
New gas field finds, especially of the size touted by Turkmenistan, are rare and the announcement created excitement in the oil and gas sector.
“According to the preliminary estimates, the well’s productivity is 500,000 cubic meters of natural gas and 150 tonnes of gas condensate per day, which confirms the huge hydrocarbon potential of the coastal zone and the shallow waters of the Caspian Sea,” the state-owned news agency Turkmenistan Today said of the discovery at the Uzunada area.
“Increasing hydrocarbon production is one of the priorities of the domestic fuel and energy complex.”
Turkmenistan’s economy is heavily skewed towards gas exports, mainly from the Galkynysh field, the second largest in the world, in the east of the country. A pipeline from the field feeds gas directly to China and a new pipeline is being built that will pump gas to Pakistan and India.
Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has talked of diversifying the Turkmen economy towards fertilizer and electricity production, but gas still dominates. The fall in gas prices has hit it hard and even forced a rare admission of economic weakness, with a cut to the manat currency in 2015.
If the new field was commercially exploited and did manage to produce at the rate of 500,000 cubic metres of gas per day claimed by Turkmenistan, it would add significant capacity to the country’s overall production. The Galkynysh field produces gas at around 1.7m – 2m cubic metres per day.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP’s Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field bloc in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea produced 581,000 barrels of oil per day in the first three months of the year, it said in a statement. This is a significant drop compared to the year before when output was recorded at 651,000 barrels per day. BP has been under pressure from the Azerbaijani authorities to boost production at SCG, the country’s main oil producers and the latest figures will likely irritate Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will sell stakes in Air Astana, oil and gas company Kazmunaigas and its state nuclear agency Kazatomprom by the end of 2019 at the latest, Kazakh Finance Minister Bakhyt Sultanov told Reuters. The new deadline appears to be an extension of previous estimates given which said that Kazakhstan would sell stakes in major companies owned by the state before the end of 2017.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has started shipping oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline for the first time since mid-2015, media reported quoting the Azerbaijani energy ministry, an indication that the country’s oil production has picked up. BTC is considered an important part of the region’s energy infrastructure as it pushes oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey. Kazakhstan had cut its oil production as prices fell. The Azerbaijani energy ministry said that 90,000 tonnes of oil from Kazakhstan have been pumped through BTC already this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) signed a deal with Kazakhstan to lend it $180m to update and integrate its irrigation systems. The modernisation and update of the system is considered vital to boosting output in Kazakhstan agriculture, an increasingly important part of the Kazakh economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)