Tag Archives: electricity

Armenia to cut energy consumption

NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia plans to cut its consumption of gas, electricity and coal by 38% and boost its electricity generation from renewable sources, deputy energy minister Hayk Harutyunyan told local media. The ambitious plan appears to be another attempt by cash-strapped countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus to cut expensive energy consumption. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have both announced plans to cut back on electricity-generation plans. Kyrgyzstan has also hinted it wants to use more green energy.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

EDB to support Tajik Nurek

NOV. 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Russo-Kazakh Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) said it is ready to consider supporting the modernisation of the Nurek hydropower plant, the largest in Tajikistan. In an interview with Avesta, EDB chairman Dmitri Pankin said that, if the government asked for help, the EDB would help fund reconstruction work at the dam together with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The Tajik government had previously said the modernisation will cost $700m.

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(News report from Issue No. 305, published on Nov. 18 2016)

Comment: Kazakh electricity plans

NOV. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government has cancelled plans to build either a thermal or nuclear power station despite saying for the past decade that an upgrade to its power generating system was vital.

At a press briefing earlier this month in Astana, Kazakh Energy Minister Kanat Bozumbayev said that, despite predictions of the opposite, Kazakhstan actually now has a surplus of power.

“We see no deficit within the next seven years, so we see no [need to build] new facilities such as a nuclear power plant within the next seven years,” he said. This is an important statement for two reasons. Firstly Bozumbayev is doing future generations of Kazakhs a disservice. Secondly he is not being honest with this current generation of Kazakhs.

Both the short-termism and the dishonesty are worrying. Kazakhstan needs more power. Just ask people living in Almaty who have to deal with an increasing number of brownouts. As the country has modernised and grown wealthier, electricity consumption has soared. World Bank data showed that in 2013, Kazakhstan’s per capita electricity consumption was 4,892 kilowatt hours, up from a post-Soviet low in 1999 of 2,838 kilowatt hours.

At the same time, Kazakhstan’s population has grown from just under 15m people in 1999 to just over 17m people in 2015.

Kazakhstan prevaricated for years with various suitors over building a new nuclear power station, its Soviet-era nuclear power station had been decommissioned in 2001, but earlier this year said it had scrapped the idea.

In September, Kazakhstan and Korea’s Samsung also finally admitted that its mothballed $2.5b plan to build a coal-fired power station on the shores of Lake Balkhash to feed electricity to Almaty had also been scrapped.

And here’s the hard truth, the real reason that Kazakh officials said they don’t need a new power station is that Kazakhstan’s finances are currently not up to funding the construction of one.

Last year, Samsung Engineering CEO Park Jung-heum said he had mothballed the Balkhash thermal power project “because of an issue with the Kazakhstan government over the guaranteed purchase of the power to be produced from the project.”

Power generation plans in Kazakhstan have become the latest victim of the economic downturn. The government should admit this and lay plans to boost production as soon as they can afford to.

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(News report from Issue No. 305, published on Nov. 18 2016)

Kazakhstan electricity distributor to sell its stakes

NOV. 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — KEGOC, Kazakhstan’s electricity distributor, renewed its plans to sell off its stakes in Kazenergoprovod, a Semey-based company that sells AC cables. First in May, then in August, KEGOC had unsuccessfully tried to sell its 49.9% stake for 98.4m tenge ($290,000). Founded in 2012, Kazenergoprovod has posted losses for three consecutive years. Local East Industry Company owns 51.1% of Kazenergoprovod.

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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)

Kazakhstan’s KEGOC pays dividend

OCT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s state-owned electricity distributor KEGOC said it paid a dividend of almost 25 tenge (7 cent) per share, amounting to 40% of the net profit for the first half of 2016. The dividend is almost three times as large as the one distributed last year. At a shareholder’s meeting, KEGOC also decided to expand its board of directors to eight, appointing two new local managers.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Kazakhstan not to consider nuclear plans

NOV. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s energy minister Kanat Bozumbayev said that the government will not consider proposals to build any new power plants for the next seven years because the country’s energy balance is stable. The issue of building a nuclear or coal-fired power plant has been on and off for years in Kazakhstan. It appears that an economic downturn, which has drained the government’s reserves, has finally snuffed out these plans altogether.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Work starts on building Tajikistan’s Rogun dam

OCT. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon inaugurated construction of the Rogun dam which should, if completed to the current plans, be the tallest dam in the world.

The Rogun dam project, though, is a project mired in controversy. Drawn up by the Soviets, it has been at the design stage for decades.

Downstream Uzbekistan is fiercely against the project, fearing that it will divert water that it needs to irrigate its cotton fields. Environmentalists have complained about the damage that will be caused to the natural landscape and human rights groups have documented the thousands of people forcibly moved to clear space for the project.

The inauguration of the Rogun dam project also came the day after a three-hour blackout hit the entire country. Supporters of the project said that this highlighted the need for the hydropower project to be built.

Italy’s Salini Impregilo was handed the $3.9b contract to build the Rogun dam earlier this year.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Petrol prices rise by 35% in Uzbekistan

OCT. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan increased the price of petrol by nearly 35%, underscoring the inflationary pressure built into its economy. State energy company Uzbekneftegaz said it was rising the price of a litre of AI-80 petrol to 2,800 soum from 2,075 soum. Other grades of petrol were given a similar price rise. Uzbekistan has been steadily increasingly the price of key items such as gas, electricity and petrol as the value of its soum currency falls, angering and frustrating ordinary people.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Comment: Russia eyes entry into the West’s CASA-1000, says Kilner

OCT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — It appears as if Pakistan is losing confidence in the West’s headline power transmission project in Central Asia — CASA-1000. It’s been talking to Russia and Turkmenistan about covering an anticipated shortfall in electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, undermining a core pillar of the project.

CASA-1000 is the World Bank funded project that will, when it is built in 2018, send electricity generated by hydropower stations in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to consumers in Pakistan via Afghanistan.

The $1.2b project was supposed to spearhead what Hillary Clinton, when she was US Secretary of State, had described as a new north-south Silk Road. The West has disengaged from Central Asia to a large extent since the drawdown of it militaries from Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, making new projects like CASA-1000 so important. The aim was to empower Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, tie both Pakistan and Afghanistan into a wider Central Asian economic sphere and restore confidence in the West’s commitment to the region.

But it may not be going to plan.

Leaders from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Pakistan gathered earlier this year to mark the start of CASA-1000’s construction. They shook hands and smiled. Now it seems that Russian and Turkmen leaders should also have been there.

Pakistan has, openly, been courting both Russia and Turkmenistan as back up energy suppliers. Its leaders appear to doubt the ability of both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to produce enough power during the freezing winters when their domestic demand spikes and water levels in their reservoirs, which feed the hydropower plants, fall.

There are also question marks over whether the Soviet-era infrastructure that both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are relying upon can cope with the demands of CASA-1000. The World Bank has promised funds to both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to boost power production but it may not be enough and it may come too late, in any case.

Russia has already told Pakistan that it will happily feed its power into CASA-1000 to make up the shortfall but, and this is the point, this would undermine the ethos of the project.

With Russia riding to the rescue, CASA-1000 risks making the West’s strategy in Central Asia look muddled.

By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin

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(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)

Kazakh electricity grid operator to pay dividend

OCT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – KEGOC, Kazakhstan’s state-owned electricity grid operator, said it would pay a dividend of 24.93 tenge/share (7.5 cent) to its shareholders. The dividend, which measured 40% of the company’s first half net profit, was, proportionally, significantly lower than its dividend last year, when it redistributed all net profit among its shareholders.

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(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)