OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s oil production will drop by 2.5% next year because of the continued slump in output from BP’s Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil fields, Reuters reported quoting a source close to the government. ACG is currently Azerbaijan’s largest oil producing field. BP has promised to maintain output but without success.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – By 2020 Kazakhstan aims to be producing 100m tonnes of oil a year, up from 82m tonnes currently, media quoted a senior official as saying. The jump in production is mainly attributed to Kashagan, the giant Caspian Sea oil field, finally starting production. It has been delayed by several years.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Goldman Sachs has said Azerbaijan is partly to blame for falling oil prices by oversupplying the market. West Texas Intermediate is trading at around $79.58 a barrel, its lowest for two years.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is considering diversifying its energy transit routes because of Western sanctions imposed on Russia, media reported. One option being considered is the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline that runs from the Azerbaijani capital to Supsa on the Georgian Black Sea coast.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian energy minister Yervand Zakharyan flew to Tehran for another round of talks with his Iranian counterpart on increasing gas supplies. Marginalised by their neighbours, Armenia and Iran have been trading gas and electricity since 2009.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Zaur Leshkasheli, a Russian oligarch, is suing investment bank Credit Suisse for not selling his 51 percent stake in the Kyurovdag oil field in Azerbaijan in 2008 for a high enough value, media reported. The court case should expose some of the murkier deal-making around the Caspian Sea.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Chinese steelmaker Baoshan Iron & Steel Co ltd (Baosteel) said it had won a contract to supply pipes for the TANAP gas pipeline running to Turkey from Azerbaijan. The contract is significant because it means Chinese companies are competing for contracts along the South Caucasus energy transit route.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – With the price of a barrel of oil falling to a four-year low, the Kazakh government has said it will review its national budget. Kazakhstan’s economy is propped up mainly by oil revenues. With oil revenues falling and with sanctions hitting Russia, Kazakhstan’s disposable income has shrunk.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a sort of best-practise benchmark for countries heavily involved in mining or oil production, told Azerbaijan that it needs to undergo a compliance check five months earlier than planned.
EITI chief Clare Short, a former British minister, said that concerns over Azerbaijan’s recent crackdown on civil society had triggered the compliance check.
“The situation facing civil society in Azerbaijan is clearly problematic,” Ms Short wrote in a statement.
“The Board discussed the findings of the fact finding mission and expressed deep concern. The Board hopes that Azerbaijan will open up more space for civil society to make its essential contribution to the EITI as laid down in our Standard.”
International pressure has been increasing on Azerbaijan over its treatment of opposition activists and human rights defenders. The EITI’s statement will be particularly irritating to Azerbaijan, though, as it has previously touted its links to EITI as evidence of its good intentions.
Being ordered to undergo a compliance check before 2015 will be publicly humiliating.
And there is some evidence that the pressure on Azerbaijan is beginning to tell. On Oct. 17, President Ilham Aliyev released four opposition activists as part of a wider amnesty.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov once again said he wanted work to begin on building a gas pipeline running across Afghanistan to Pakistan and India by 2015, media reported. The so-called TAPI pipeline is a major project designed to feed gas to India and Pakistan and give economic security to Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)