JUNE 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – During a trip to Ashgabat by South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov awarded a $4b contract to build gas processing plants to South Korea’s LG and Hyundai. Ms Geun-hye has been on a week-long tour of Central Asia that has taken in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan too.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso visited Baku in a strong show of support for strengthening relations with Azerbaijan.
Mr Barroso pledged not only the EU’s full support for the Southern Corridor, an energy transit route from the Caspian Sea, but also support for a pact to further push Azerbaijan towards Europe.
Europe’s main motivation for the Southern Corridor — hinged around a gas pipeline linking the Caspian Sea to central Europe — is to reduce its reliance on Russia for its gas supplies. Azerbaijan’s motivation is to link directly to a major client.
But talk of another deal moves EU-Azerbaijan relations on to another level. Potentially, at least.
“We held a very successful meeting with President Ilham Aliyev, and made important decisions, one of which was to hasten the completion of a new agreement between Azerbaijan and the EU,” media quoted Mr Barroso as saying.
Russia is likely to look poorly on any move by Azerbaijan to integrate more closely with Europe. Just as with Ukraine and Georgia, Russia considers Azerbaijan to be part of its patch.
Three days after Mr Barroso’s visit to Baku, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov flew into town for bilateral talks. He is sure to make this point to the Azerbaijani leadership.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In 2013, Turkmenistan produced 62.3b cubic metres of gas, only a slight increase on the previous year, BP said in its annual review of the world’s energy setup. It also said that after Russia, Iran and Qatar, Turkmenistan holds the largest gas reserves in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – South Korean president Park Geun-hye started a six day trip to Central Asia by visiting Tashkent.
There Ms Guen-hye pledged to increase cooperation in gas and solar power sector.
This was just the first stage in an important Central Asia trip for the South Korean leader. Ms Guen-hye now travels to Astana and then to Ashgabat laying down a serious marker in the region.
Central Asia is a natural region for South Korea to look to carve out an overseas trade foothold. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ensured that this was the case.
In the 1930s, worried about their loyalty, Stalin moved hundreds of thousands of Koreans living in the east of the Soviet Union to Central Asia. Most settled around Tashkent or Almaty.
Now both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have large Korean minorities. Many ethnic Koreans are involved in business and some in politics. There are Korean restaurants in cities in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and transport links with Seoul are well-established.
Ms Geun-hye is looking to leverage these ties to ensure that South Korea is able to tap into the region’s energy reserves as well as putting Korean companies in a good position to do business.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Days after buying an extra 10% stake in Azerbaijan’s biggest gas project, Turkey agreed a $3.3b credit line for a subsidiary of SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state-owned energy company. The loan, which cements the two countries’ alliance, will be spent on building an oil refinery in Turkey.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Turkey plans to increase the amount of gas from Turkmenistan that it transports to Europe, media quoted Turkish President Abdullah Gul as saying at the end of a trip to Ankara by Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. Turkmenistan has become a major gas producer over the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Malaysia’s PM Datuk Razak visited Ashgabat for talks with Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov on how to develop Islamic banking in the Central Asian state.
This is significant because Malaysia is the home of Islamic banking and also because it shows that Turkmenistan may be serious about developing out another section of its economy. Turkmenistan’s new found international status is built on gas exports.
Mr Razak also clearly had an agenda for boosting the presence of Malaysia’s state-owned energy company Petronas in Turkmenistan. Mr Razak said that Petronas had already invested about $8b in Turkmenistan’s energy sector.
“The Turkmenistan President is keen that Malaysia becomes a partner in all areas. This is because his confidence in Malaysia is very high,” Mr Razak said before flying back to Malaysia. “Malaysia has become a priority nation for Turkmenistan.”
Maybe but currently trade outside the oil and gas sector between Malaysia and Turkmenistan is light. Media reported that bilateral trade amounted to just $33m last year and that only 940 Malaysian tourists visited Turkmenistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – After years of delays, German energy company RWE said it would finally start an evaluation of the Nakhchivan gas and oil deposit in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea.
The announcement is another boost for Azerbaijan’s energy sector which has seen billions of dollars of investments over the past couple of years.
Part of the attractiveness of Azerbaijan’s energy sector is its relative stability and the extra pipeline infrastructure that is being built to send supplies west to Europe.
The Azerbaijani government has been pushing RWE to move ahead with plans to develop the Nakhchivan deposit since the two sides signed a production sharing agreement in 2011.
“We hope to close everything within the next months. . . and to drill our well in the beginning of the next year.” Martin Wellens, the new projects development head at RWE told journalists at an energy conference in Baku.
SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state-owned energy company, had been getting increasingly frustrated with RWE. Media had reported that SOCAR would suspend its product sharing agreement with RWE unless it hurried up its development of Nakhchivan.
Soviet geologists first discovered Nakhchivan in the 1960s but it was not developed as there were more accessible and easier-to-drill wells that could be tapped first.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An appeals court in Atyrau upheld an earlier $730m fine against the consortium developing the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian for environmental damage. The fine was originally imposed for excessive gas flaring after an accident in September 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Replacing two corroding 90km-long gas pipelines at the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea will cost “several billion dollars” and delay the re-start of production until at least 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported quoting a person familiar with the project.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)