MARCH 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – BPC Engineering, the Russian distributor of California-based Capstone Turbine, said it reached an agreement with the Kazakh government to supply seven micro-turbines for the Beineu-Shymkent gas pipeline. Around 50 micro-turbines are needed in the pipeline, part of a $3.5b project to pump gas from west to south Kazakhstan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
APRIL 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR said it hopes to solve the DESFA affair by the end of the year, but should Fluxys’ shareholders officially decide to back out of an earlier plan to buy part of the Greek company, Azerbaijan’s state-owned company will find it hard to comply with EU regulations.
The so-called Third Energy Package is a set of regulations the EU adopted in 2009 with the objective of liberalising its energy market, chiefly by separating the ownership of upstream, midstream and downstream operations, a process known as “unbundling” in Brussels.
According to these rules, SOCAR cannot buy, as it wished, a majority stake in DESFA, the Greek gas distributor.
That would effectively mean that the gas supplier would own the distributor as well.
SOCAR also owns a majority stake in TANAP, a pipeline running across Turkey. SOCAR is allowed to keep its 58% share in TANAP because it lies outside EU jurisdiction.
But when in 2013 it agreed a deal to buy 66% of the debt-ridden Greek company for €400m ($454m), the European Commission stepped in and froze the purchase. It said that SOCAR could own 49% of DESF but no more.
For a year now, SOCAR has tried to find buyers for part of the 66% stake it agreed to buy. If Fluxys flakes, Italian Snam Rete Gas and Dutch Gasunie could be next in line.
Even though SOCAR has become a good friend of the EU for its key role in the completion of the Southern Gas Corridor project, seen by Europe as a viable alternative to gas from Russia, it apparently cannot escape the severe hand of the EU’s army of regulators.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A new refinery opened in Tajikistan’s northern town of Kanibadam, a major boost to the country’s oil products output. Naftrasom, a private company owned by Nosir Usmonov, built the plant with a $3.5m investment. The refinery will have a capacity of 70,000 tonnes. As confirmed by Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, who attended the inauguration, Tajikistan will import raw materials for the plant, mostly from Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
ALMATY, MARCH 29 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — Unaoil, a consultancy based in Monaco, channelled millions of dollars of bribes to Emerging Market governments and their companies, including in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, on behalf of major Western firms, an investigation by Australia’s The Age and The Huffington Post said.
The report used data from a massive cache of leaked emails and corporate documents from 2001-2012 to unveil what it described as “the world’s biggest bribe scandal.”
The Ahsani family, Monaco millionaires Ata and his sons Cyrus and Saman, ran Unaoil as a sort of lobbying intermediary. They denied allegations of bribe paying.
“What we do is integrate Western technology with local capability,” Ata Ahsani told the investigation team.
Effectively, the report said of Unaoil: “Its operatives bribe officials in oil-producing nations to help these clients win government-funded projects. The corrupt officials might rig a tender committee. Or leak inside information. Or ensure a contract is awarded without a competitive tender.”
One of Unaoil’s biggest client was US engineering giant Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a former subsidiary of Halliburton, which operates in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
In both Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, KBR allegedly used Unaoil’s services to reach preferential deals and licences, mostly through personal connections and bribes to public officials.
KBR has not commented.
In Kazakhstan, leaked emails showed that Unaoil allegedly liaised with both Eni (codenamed “the spaghetti house”) and Kazmunaigas officials (codenamed “shashlik”) to secure tenders for KBR at the Kashagan offshore oil project.
Italian oil major Eni has not commented.
In Azerbaijan, both KBR and Swiss ABB allegedly won offshore oil contracts through insider information leaked by an in-country lead who had been bribed by Unaoil.
Swiss ABB has not commented.
After the report was published, police in Monaco raided the head- quarters of Unaoil. The FBI, the British Serious Fraud Office and the Australian Federal Police all launched major bribery investigations linked to the case.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan-focused Roxi Petroleum said it will issue 500,000 new shares on AIM to start trading from April 4. Roxi’s shares fell sharply by 8% on the day of the announcement, to 12p. Hit by low oil prices, Roxi’s shares had picked up in January, matching a rise in global prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan-focused Nostrum Oil and Gas posted a 42% fall in revenues in 2015, a consequence of sustained low oil prices and falling production. Last year, Nostrum’s profits were $449m compared to $782m in 2014. Production volumes also fell to 40,391 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a 9% fall on 2014. Nostrum cut its capital expenditure in 2015 for drilling operations by 54% to $58.7m.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkey’s Calik Holding said it wants to build a combined-cycle thermal, wind and hydropower station and a gas storage facility in Georgia. Calik’s chairman Ahmet Calik and Georgia’s PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili met in Tbilisi and discussed Calik’s plans in Georgia. Calik has already built a 220 MW combined-cycle power plant in Gardabani, 40km south of Tbilisi.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian PM Hovik Abrahamyan said that Russia will reduce gas prices and that a final decision will be taken when PM Dmitri Medvedev visits Yerevan next week. The Armenian newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak reported that the discount could be 12%. The Hrapak newspaper also reported that the pricing could be switched to roubles.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Guernsey-based Tethys Petroleum said its losses more than quadrupled in 2015 compared to the previous year, mostly due to the depreciation of some of its Kazakh assets. Tethys lost $74.6m in 2015. According to the company’s yearly report, the tenge depreciation also dented revenues. The tenge lost around half its value against the US dollar in 2015.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Igor Makarov, head of Russian company ARETI, previously known as ITERA, met with Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to discuss cooperation in the energy sector. ARETI works in 21 offshore blocks in the Turkmen section of the Caspian Sea through a contract signed in 2009.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)