NOV. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan will host the official groundbreaking ceremony for the TAPI pipeline, which will pump gas from fields in the east of the country to consumers in India, via Afghanistan and Pakistan, on Dec. 13. This is important because TAPI has been spoken of for decades.
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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)
OCT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a snub to Moscow, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov hosted talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on sending gas to Ukraine.
At the meeting in Ashgabat the two leaders signed several intergovernmental agreements on industrial and agricultural cooperation. Energy, though, was top of the agenda.
No deal was signed but both leaders said progress had been made.
“We are ready to increase supplies to Ukraine of products from our domestic fuel and energy complex and begin implementing joint projects in this sphere,” Mr Berdymukhamedov said according to state media.
Both Ukraine and Turkmenistan have fallen out with the Kremlin.
The Ukrainian government is locked in a protracted civil war in the east of the country against rebel forces funded by Russia. Turkmenistan has fallen out with Russia’s Gazprom over gas contracts. Earlier this year, Mr Berdymukhamedov called Gazprom an “unreliable partner”.
Russia has begun to cut gas supplies to Ukraine, forcing it to look for alternative suppliers. It has also sharply lowered its purchase of Turkmen gas over the past few years.
The biggest problem for Turkmenistan is how to avoid using Russia’s extensive pipeline network to send gas to Ukraine. It is exploring sending gas and oil products across the Caspian Sea, potentially via a new pipeline but also by ship. From there, gas and oil products can be transported to the Black Sea coast and then shipped to Ukraine.
Media said Mr Berdymukhamedov was due in Kiev next year.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Intergas Central Asia said it would buy back $270m of its outstanding Eurobonds due in 2017, media reported. Intergas is a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s state owned pipeline company KazTransGas. Analysts said the buyback was positive for Intergas as it reduced its exposure to Kazakh banks.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — TAPI consortium members signed a deal described by the Asian Development Bank as a milestone shareholders’ agreement at a meeting in Ashgabat, an important step towards turning TAPI from a paper project into a real project. The TAPI project aims to build a pipeline to pump Turkmen gas to India, across Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan said construction of the TAPI pipeline that will, it is hoped, pump gas from fields in the east of the country to consumers in India would start in 2016. Earlier this year, Turkmenistan had pushed for TAPI to start by the end of 2015. TAPI is a $10b project that will cross Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — KazTransGas, Kazakhstan’s state owned gas distributor, warned Georgia it might take their dispute over its subsidiary to international arbitration if Georgia failed to restart negotiations. KazTransGas is looking for compensation for the $130m it spent on its subsidiary KazTransGas-Tbilisi in 2006-09 before the Georgian government took control of the company.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Oil flows through the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline fell by 1% in the first nine months of 2015 compared to the same period last year, an unnamed source at Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR told Reuters. Oil output in Azerbaijan has been falling over the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has begun work on the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) project, part of the route that will carry gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, local media quoted Rovnag Abdullayev, the chairman of Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR, as saying. Mr Abdullayev said that 400km of pipes had been delivered to TANAP.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — KazTransGaz Aimak, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s state-owned gas transit system, said it plans to issue Eurobonds for 5b tenge ($18.6m) to refinance its outstanding debt. KazTransGas Aimak, which controls the gas distribution system in the Almaty region, has an outstanding bonds issue of 8.6b tenge ($31.9m) maturing in December 2018.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan will begin construction on the multi-billion- dollar gas pipeline running from its fields in the east of the country to India in December, Reuters quoted an unnamed government official as saying. This is the strongest indication yet that work is about to being on the so-called TAPI pipeline.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)