Tag Archives: hydrocarbons

Fuel prices rising in Tajikistan

JAN. 18 2021 (The Bulletin) — Fuel prices are rising in Tajikistan, media reported by quoting local taxi drivers who said that there had been a 10% increase in the past week. Analysts said that the fuel price increase is linked to a drop in imports of fuel from Russia and Kazakhstan. Tajikistan does not have its own oil refinery and is reliant on imports.

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— This story was first published in issue 469 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Power outages dent Kazakh oil exports

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JAN. 18 2021 (The Bulletin) — Power outages in Kazakhstan have caused Kazakh oil exports to fall by around 130,000 barrels per day, Reuters reported by quoting a source. The source said that power outage problems were impacting production at the country’s two main fields, Tengiz and Kashagan, in the west of the country. From Jan. 17, the source said, Kazakhstan had been pumping 1.62m barrels of oil per day, down from its target of 1.75m.

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— This story was first published in issue 469 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Turkmenistan opens new gas compressor station

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JAN. 16 2021 (The Bulletin) — Turkmenistan opened a new compressor station that it said would double the volume of gas pumped to China. Gas is the cornerstone of Turkmenistan’s economy and China is, by a wide margin, its largest client. The coronavirus, and the various measures taken to counter it, have forced a slump in demand for gas from China, hurting the Turkmen economy. Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said that the compressor station would double the volume of gas that could be pumped to China.

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— This story was first published in issue 469 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Power failure causes blockouts and fuel shortages in Central Asia

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ALMATY/JAN. 5 2021 (The Bulletin) — A failure in the system that transmits electricity around Central Asia triggered the shut down of several power stations, causing blackouts across the region and fuel shortages in Uzbekistan (Jan. 5).

The breakdown of transmission lines also highlighted the fragility of the electricity transmission network, dubbed the United Energy System

Analysts said that a surge in power use in Uzbekistan was probably to blame for the breakdown of transmission lines. This triggered blackouts in Almaty, Bishkek and several regions in Uzbekistan because emergency systems automatically shut down several power stations.

Uzbek officials also said the blackouts caused a production drop at the Mubarek Gas Processing plant, in the south of the country. Drivers in Uzbekistan use gas to fuel their cars and restrictions were announced.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Caspian Sea gas reaches Central Europe

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BAKU/JAN. 1 2021 (The Bulletin) — Gas produced in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea which is then pumped through a 3,500km pipeline that cost $45b to build is now, finally, reaching central Europe.

The completion of the so-called Southern Gas Corridor is viewed in Europe as an important part of its strategy to reduce its reliance on Russia for gas supplies, and in Baku as the start of what Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev hopes will be a major boost for the economy.

“The Southern Gas Corridor will strengthen the system of global energy security. It has connected the Caspian region to Europe,” Azerbaijan’s energy ministry said in a statement after Greece, Bulgaria and Italy confirmed that gas had arrived through the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, the final part of the Southern Gas Corridor.

The question analysts have posed, though, is not if gas will be delivered to Europe, but how much? There have been concerns that lockdowns imposed to control the coronavirus pandemic have dented demand for consumers for gas, although what is shaping up to be a cold European winter may have changed this thinking.

Linked pipelines running across Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and the Balkans now pump gas directly from the BP controlled Shah Deniz 2 project in the Caspian Sea to Europe.

The European Commission is keen on the project because it wants to reduce its dependency on Russia, which controls 34% of the European gas market. It first floated the plan to build a pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Europe in 2008.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Romania’s OMV sells Kazakhstan assets

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DEC. 29 2020 (The Bulletin) –Romania’s OMV sold its two subsidiaries in Kazakhstan, KomMunai and Tasbulat Oil, to Magnetic Oil, which is inked to the Kazakh elite for an undisclosed because it said that it wanted to concentrate on projects closer to its core base in the Balkans. KomMunai and Tasbulat Oil owned four production licences for onshore fields in Kazakhstan’s western Mangistau region.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

The Caspian Sea is shrinking, warn scientists

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ALMATY/DEC. 23 2020 (The Bulletin) — The Caspian Sea, which provides a livelihood for thousands of people and acts as a fulcrum for international transit routes through the Central Asia and South Caucasus region, is shrinking, new scientific research showed (Dec. 23).

The report produced by universities in Germany and the Netherlands said that the Caspian Sea could lose up to a third of its water by 2100, with water level dropping by 18m, marooning previously important ports hundreds of kilometres inland.

The report’s authors said they wanted to use the threat to the Caspian Sea to highlight the dangers of global warming to inland seas and lakes.

“A massive warning signal is the projected catastrophic drop in water levels for the Caspian Sea, the largest lake in the world, which could hit stakeholders unprepared,” the report said.

Previous studies have warned that the Caspian Sea has been shrinking since the 1990s but not this quickly.

Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan border the Caspian Sea, which lies at the centre of a series of transport corridors that ultimately connect East Asia with Europe.

The Caspian Sea also hosts the region’s oil and gas industry and is a wildlife reserve, supporting seals, and migratory birds. The report showed how vast areas of the northern section of the Caspian Sea could dry up, with Atyrau in Kazakhstan effectively being stranded hundreds of kilometres from the shore.

Central Asia’s reputation for ecological disasters is already secure with the shrinking of the Aral Sea, which is shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It shrank in the 1960s and 1970s to half its original size because of Soviet schemes to siphon off its tributaries to irrigate cotton fields.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Oil companies close Ashgabat offices on coronavirus fears

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JULY 29 (The Bulletin) — Petronas, the Malaysian oil and gas company, closed its office in Ashgabat after 10 of its employees tested positive for the coronavirus.

The closure is perhaps the strongest indication yet that despite the insistence of Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov that Turkmenistan had escaped the pandemic, coronavirus has infiltrated the country.

Turkmen media has also reported that Chinese state-owned China National Petroleum Company has also closed its office Ashgabat. Since a visit by the World Health Organisation (WHO) this month, masks have become commonplace in Turkmenistan and some shopping centres and bazaars have been closed.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Gas sales will prop up Azerbaijani economy – S&P

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JULY 27 (The Bulletin) — Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, said that extra gas sales from the Caspian Sea project Shah Deniz 2 will push up Azerbaijan’s GDP over the next few years, countering the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. It predicted GDP growth of 3.7% in 2021-23. Oil and gas sales generate 40% of Azerbaijan’s GDP.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Armenian government declines gas price rise for consumers

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YEREVAN/JUNE 19 (The Bulletin) — Consumers in Armenia will not pay any more for their gas despite a push by Russia’s Gazprom, the gas supplier, to increase prices after the Armenian Public Services Regulatory Commission ordered a price freeze.

The ruling is a victory for Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan who has styled himself as the champion of the people since he was propelled to power in a revolution in 2018.

In 2015, street protests against rises to electricity tariffs forced the government into an embarrassing u-turn and Mr Pashinyan was desperate not to stoke frustration now, especially with anger at the government’s handling of the coronavirus growing and the prospect of the economy tipping into a recession.

Quoting the Public Services Regulatory Commission, media in Armenia said that consumers would continue to pay a subsidised 139 Armenian drams per cubic metre of gas and vulnerable groups will pay 100 drams per cubic metre if their consumption does not exceed 600 cubic metres per year.

Instead, businesses that consume more than 10,000 cubic metres of gas per year and greenhouses will pay more for their gas, meeting some of the price rises that the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom had been asking for.

Earlier this month, Mr Pashinyan had proposed that the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union unify gas tariffs across the region.

This was rejected by the Kremlin, though, which said it needed more price flexibility to react to global market moves.

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— This story was first published in issue 451 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin on June 23 2020