AUG.12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has said it will export power to Iraq and Afghanistan, media reported. The deal is particularly important for the US which has urged Azerbaijan to increase its involvement in regional politics. Azerbaijan has become relatively rich through oil and gas exports.
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(News report from Issue No. 195, published on Aug. 13 2014)
JULY 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – BP said it had hired former British PM Tony Blair for its advisory board on how best to export energy from the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea to Europe. Mr Blair has been an adviser to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev since 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s oil output has continued to fall in 2014 despite attempts by BP, the country’s biggest foreign investor, to stem the decline. Reuters quoted a source in the Azerbaijani statistics department as saying that output was down 2.8% in the first six months of the year.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia ratified a deal that gives Armenia tax-free imports of gas, oil and diamonds until it joins the Eurasian Economic Union. Russia has become a major patron of Armenia. This year it completed the purchase of Armenia’s gas supply network. Armenia hopes to join the Eurasian Economic Union this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on July 2 2014)
JUNE 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has reduced flaring off excess gas at oil producing plants by 50% over the last two years, Anita Georgia a World Bank official said in an interview with Bloomberg.The World Bank is pushing for countries to reduce flaring.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Workers at an oil services company that supplies equipment to the Kashagan oil project in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea have gone on strike, media reported.
Since a strike by oil workers in west Kazakhstan ended in 2011 in clashes with police and 15 people being killed, the authorities have been ultra-sensitive to industrial action, so news that workers have walked out of Tuplar Energy Serves Company (TESCO) complaining of late salary payments will frustrate them.
TESCO have responded that their main client, the Australian company WorleyParsons hasn’t paid their invoices on time. WorleyParsons hasn’t commented.
The importance of this latest strike action in west Kazakhstan is not who is ultimately responsibly, no doubt lawyers will thrash this out, but the impact on the local community. If people aren’t working and aren’t being paid that means less cash in the local economy, increasing frustration and resentment of the increasingly rich political elite.
One disgruntled worker told the lada.kz news website: “I came here to work and establish a family, now I can’t find another job, the company hasn’t paid me for six months and the banks are pressuring me about my mortgage.”
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan and Italy demonstrated their strong links by agreeing a series of deals at a meeting between Italian PM Matteo Renzi and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev at the Borovoye resort outside Astana.
Despite criticism of its handling of the Kashagan oil field development in the Caspian Sea, Italian energy company ENI was the main beneficiary of the deals.
Kashagan was supposed to be pumping out oil and projecting Kazakhstan into the top ranks of global oil producers. Instead, it lies idle while repairs are made.
Alongside Kazakh energy company KazMunaiGaz, ENI will explore a new site in the Caspian Sea. It will also team up with Italian engineer Finmeccanica to build a new shipyard at Kuryk on the Caspian Sea coast. Italian truck maker Iveco also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Kazakh ministry of transport.
Domenico Sermesi, a partner at Almaty-based Adala Consulting, said the deals were good news.
“After the hiccups of last summer, this agreement, together with the document on the military corridor, is a sign of a renewed partnership,” he said.
Reference to a military corridor is to NATO forces withdrawing from Afghanistan through Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan and Italy certainly have a close relationship and Mr Nazarbayev emphasised this when he said that he was “confident that ENI’s activities in Kazakhstan will continue to be successful”.
Of course there will be strings attached to this backing. Kazakhstan will expect support for its application to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and also to win a seat at the UN Security Council in 2017/18.
Regardless, the Italian stock market liked Mr Renzi’s visit to Kazakhstan. ENI’s shares rose 1.66% afterwards in an otherwise flat market.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament ratified a deal that will increase the amount of Russian oil pumped through Kazakh pipelines to China to 10m tonnes per year from 7m tonnes per year. The deal highlights Kazakhstan’s role as a oil transporter, and not just a producer, to China.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 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 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Oil output is still falling at the Azeri, Chirag and Guneshli fields (ACG). A source at SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, said oil output dropped 2.4% in the first five months of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. BP, the operator, had promised to stem the drop at ACG.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)