Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Kazakh president offers support to Erdogan

ALMATY, AUG. 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev flew to Ankara to meet with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, making him the first head-of-state to travel to Turkey since a coup attempt in July.

The meeting highlighted Mr Nazarbayev’s savvy foreign policy and his attempts to maintain a balance between the competing pressures placed over Kazakhstan by rival powers, mainly Russia, China, and Turkey and to a lesser extent the US.

On his trip to Ankara, Mr Nazarbayev voiced his support for Mr Erdogan, seen as one of the strongest leaders in the Muslim world, and, importantly, he also went some way to appeasing Mr Erdogan’s quest to crackdown on supporters of the exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen when he said that he would send back any teachers linked to the outlawed movement.

“We do not support anyone going against Turkey. This is not in our interest. Both sides’ education ministries will control the schools by creating a working group,” media quoted Mr Nazarbayev as saying. “If there are teachers with links, we will send them back and ask the Turkish government to send other teachers.”

Mr Erdogan has blamed his former ally Mr Gulen, who now lives in the US for organising the coup attempt. He has arrested thousands of Gulenists in Turkey and put pressure on Turkey’s allies to close schools and hospitals linked to the Gulen movement.

Mr Nazarbayev, though, stopped short of agreeing to close the 30 Gulen-linked schools outright, as Kyrgyzstan has also declined to do. They are considered a key part of the Kazakh education system, offering a syllabus based on a secular scientific curriculum. News reports said that only around 8% to 9% of the teachers at Kazakhstan’s Gulenist schools were from Turkey.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

KMG EP minority shareholders defeat Kazakhstan’s oil and gas plans

AUG. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After months of increasingly bitter rows, minority shareholders at London-traded KMG EP voted against selling their stakes in the company to its parent Kazakhstan’s state owned Kazmunaigas. Kazmunaigas had been looking to boost its 58% stake in the company, one of its few assets which have been doing relatively well during an increasingly tough oil-linked economic downturn. KMG EP mainly owns downstream operations which earn US dollars. These have been more profitable than many of KMG’s upstream operations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Kazakh court frees opposition leader

AUG. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A judge in Kazakhstan ordered opposition leader Vladimir Kozlov to be released on parole, five years into a 7-1/2 sentence for trying to overthrow the government. Kozlov was the highest profile opposition figure to be imprisoned for trying to overthrow the government after clashes between oil workers and police in the west of the country in December 2011 that killed at least 16 people. The government has 15 days to act on the judge’s decision to free Kozlov.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

KazTransOil revenues drop

JULY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil pipeline operator KazTransOil said its revenues fell by 1.2% to 96b tenge ($273m) in H1 2016, compared to the same period last year. KazTransOil, part of the Kazmunaigas group of companies, also said that it transported 10% less oil in H1 2016.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Dispute threatens Kazakh refinery company’s sale of Romanian refinery

JULY 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A legal battle between Kazakhstan’s KMG International and the Roma- nian government risks stalling a $680m deal to sell a majority stake in the Kazakh company’s refinery to China’s CEFC.

KMG International, formerly known as Rompetrol, is preparing to lodge a lawsuit against the Romanian government over the seizure in May of its assets, according to the FT.

The Romanian government has said the Petromidia refinery, the largest in the country, was illegally privatised in the early 2000s before Kazmunaigas bought Rompetrol.

KMG International has now submitted a legal note to the Romanian government that will escalate the dispute.

“Romania is using its governmental power to undermine that transaction and re-nationalise the assets,” the FT quoted KMG International as saying in a letter to the government.

KMG International had to delay finalising the deal with CEFC, which in December agreed a $680m fee to buy 51% of the refinery.

Robert Cutler, Senior Researcher at the Institute of European Studies at Carleton University, Montreal, said that Romania was looking to block the sale.

“Kazakhstan is about to find out what it is like to be on the receiving end of ‘resource nationalism’, which it [Kazakhstan] has successfully used against foreign investors over the last decade,” he told The Conway Bulletin.

This delay and the asset freeze has angered officials at both KMG International and Kazmunaigas, its parent company.

Senior company officials have said that they will take legal action if the refinery sale is delayed.

Romanian investigators have focused on recovering cash from an allegedly illegal privatisation of the refinery in 2003, when the late Dinu Patriciu bought Petromidia for $760m. In 2007, Patriciu sold Rompetrol, which controlled Petromidia, to Kazmunaigas for $1.6b.

In the following years, the government acquired an 18% stake in the refinery.

Now, analysts say, the government might be looking to renationalise the refinery, an important and lucrative asset for Romania.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

PetroKazakhstan’s production shrinks in H1

JULY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-traded upstream oil company KMG EP said its H1 2016 production shrank by 0.7% to 6.1m tonnes of oil. In particular, the company said that production slowed significantly at PetroKazakhstan’s operations in central Kazakhstan. KMG EP owns a 33% stake in PetroKazakhstan, while China’s CNPC owns the rest. KMG EP is a subsidiary of state-owned energy company Kazmunaigas.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Kazakh miner’s production grows

JULY 22-28 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan miner KAZ Minerals posted a 43% growth in output in H1 2016, compared to the same period last year, to 52,600 tonnes of copper cathode. KAZ Minerals also said it cut costs for the development of its Aktogay project by 4.4% to $2.2b. Together with Bozshakol in northern Kazakhstan, the Aktogay project, located in eastern Kazakhstan, is KAZ Mineral’s main copper asset.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Yandex taxi to expand in Georgia and Kazakhstan

JULY 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Internet taxi service Yandex Taxi said it plans to enter the Georgian market and expand its presence across Kazakhstan from its base in Almaty. Yandex Taxi entered the Armenian market in July, triggering complaints of price dumping from the traditional taxi association in Yerevan. In June, mobile-based Uber started operations in Astana.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Gas tariff rise in Kazakhstan

JULY 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh anti-monopoly agency approved a 39% increase in the top rate it can charge for pumping gas through its pipeline network to 1,769 tenge/1,000 cubic metres ($5), in a move that will impact domestic and industrial gas prices. The new tariff ceiling will come into effect on Sept. 1 and will be valid until 2020. Gas price rises are a sensitive issue. Governments across the region have been raising prices slowly, moving away from Soviet subsidies. This, though, has frustrated people and triggered anti government protests.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Two Kazakhs arrested for spreading rumours

ALMATY, JULY 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh police arrested two people for spreading false information of a major terrorist attack in Almaty via Whatsapp after a lone gunman killed five people earlier this month.

The authorities have said they will take a tough attitude against people who spread rumours. Many Kazakhs are signed up to a series of Whatsapp news groups through which they share information.

On July 18, after a gunman killed eight people in Almaty, security forces ordered people to stay inside. A series of Whatsapp messages about the deteriorating scenario filled the news vacuum.

Ruslan, a 23-year-old Almaty resident, explained.

“I received many pictures and voice messages on my chat groups on Whatsapp,” he told The Conway Bulletin. “But in the end most of that information from voice messages turned out to be fake.”

An interior ministry spokesperson said a 20-year old woman was arrested for spreading false information about hostages being taken at a shopping mall and another man was arrested for spreading rumours that hundreds of armed men were marching through an Almaty suburb.

In February 2014, rumours spread about the bankruptcy of three of Kazakhstan’s biggest banks, triggering a run on the banks and a shortage of cash. In response, a new law came into force making the spread of false information punishable by 10 years inprison.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)