Tag Archives: pipelines

PM unveils plan for new Black Sea port in Georgia

May 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia will start building a deep water port on its Black Sea coast to cope with an expected surge in cargo being transported across the South Caucasus and on to Europe.

Georgian PM Irakli Garibshvili appeared to slip in news of the planned construction, almost casually, during comments he made at a Georgia-France business forum.

“We expect that Georgia’s demand for transport and logistics will increase,” the Trend news agency quoted Mr Garibashvili as saying.

“Therefore, we have decided to construct a deep-sea port in the Black Sea (Anaklia), to better serve the rapidly growing business in transportation and warehousing sectors.”

There has been something of an infrastructure boom across the South Caucasus.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline pumps oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, generating revenue for the transit countries and plans for more pipelines will also push up earnings.

What Mr Garibashvili was talking about though is physical cargo transported from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey have combined to modernise the co-called Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway. This is predominantly a trade route used to transit goods. Although it doesn’t finish in Anaklia it will still benefit the port town just north of Poti.

Increased trade across the South Caucasus is set to give Georgian industry a much needed boost.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)

Kashagan to replace all pipelines in Kazakhstan

May 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin)- The consortium of companies developing the giant Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea will have to replace the entire pipeline system, Kazakhstan’s oil and gas minister Uzakbai Karabalin said. The massive rebuild may delay the re-start of Kashagan beyond 2015.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)

Gas supplies cut to Armenia

May 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A landslide in Georgia damaged a pipeline, temporarily cutting off gas supplies to Armenia, media reported. It’s unclear how serious the damage caused by the landslide is or when gas supplies through the pipeline will resume. Gazprom Armenia said it had enough reserves to cover the shortfall from the pipeline

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)

Tajikistan hosts energy talks with Turkmenistan

MAY 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon hosted talks with his Turkmen counterpart President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov for the first time in four years. Various deals and documents were signed by both sides, including the start of work on a new gas pipeline.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 183, published on May 7 2014)

EU could extend Azerbaijani pipelines

APRIL 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Union is considering extending the proposed TANAP-TAP gas pipeline from Azerbaijan from its current endpoint in Italy to France and Spain, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported quoting a European Commission official. TANAP-TAP is supposed to be completed by 2019.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)

Turkmen president calls for TAPI to speed up

APRIL 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — It appears that Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is in a rush to start on the so-called TAPI pipeline that planners hope will carry gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to south Asia.

The pugnacious Mr Berdymukhamedov said that work should begin on the pipeline in 2015, an ambitious timeframe in anybody’s books.

TAPI has been talked about for a few years. The US and others see the pipeline as a way of locking in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Pakistan, into the global energy network.

Once the notoriously restless and fractious Afghanistan is a stakeholder in this system, the thinking goes, stability will be more appealing.

And Turkmenistan is the perfect gas supplier. Stable and with ample supplies, Turkmenistan is keen to exploit its reserves and increase its client list, as Mr Berdymukhamedov’s haste betrays.

The problem is that although Turkmenistan may be ready to begin this ambitious 1,735km project, Afghanistan and Pakistan are far less ready.

Afghanistan is currently midway through a complex presidential election and is facing the prospect of a security vacuum once NATO forces withdraw this year.

The $8b project has enough support from international donors and from Western nations to push it forward. Turkmenistan, which is looking to boost its client base, needs to be patient.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)

Russia sanction could hit Kazakhstan

APRIL 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The fallout from Ukraine’s revolution and the ensuing standoff between Russia and the West has created a headache for Kazakhstan.

If relations fray further the US and the EU may impose trade sanctions on Russia and these will impact Kazakhstan.

But the Kazakh energy sector is probably more robust than energy minister Uzakbai Karabalin made out last week.

Kazakhstan relies heavily on Russia as a transit country for its oil and it may have to find alternative export routes, but those routes do exist. This might include sending oil south, through Iran to the Persian Gulf.

Around a third of Kazakhstan’s oil exports flow through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) which owns the pipeline running from Atyrau in western Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk on Russia’s black Sea coast.

At first glance it looks as if any sanctions on Russia would hit CPC — the pipeline crosses Russia and feeds into a Russian mix of oil. But the CPC has international status and should, in theory, be exempt from sanctions.

Kazakhstan now also exports much of its oil to China, across the Caspian Sea and through the South Caucasus. Mr Karabalin’s concerns about the impact on Kazakhstan’s domestic oil-products market from a sanctions hit Russia also feels slightly overblown.

Kazakhstan has a shortage of refinery capacity and has to import oil products from China and Russia. This has been expensive and has threatened to push up prices.

If the West did impose sanctions on Russia and it did flood Kazakhstan with oil products, prices would drop.

Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia are exposed to Russia’s economy. If, under the weight of threatened sanctions, it stutters, so too does Central Asia. Kazakhstan’s energy sector, though, is more sheltered.

(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)

Kazakhstan increases pipeline exports

APRIL 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Oil exports via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) that runs from Atyrau in western Kazakhstan, north of the Caspian Sea into Russia and on to the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk expanded by 24% in March from a year earlier after a successful capacity upgrade.

(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)

China wants to build pipeline through Tajikistan

MARCH 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — China’s state-run energy company CNPC set up a firm with Tajikistan’s Tajiktransgas to build a fourth branch of a pipeline pumping gas from Turkmenistan to China. China now dominates energy exports from Central Asia. Tajikistan will received a fee for hosting the pipeline.

(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)

KazTransGaz receives Chinese loan

FEB. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh state-owned pipeline monopoly KazTransGaz agreed to take a $700m loan from the China Development Bank to build a second 311km gas pipeline from southern Kazakhstan to China. The loan highlights the dominance of Chinese finance and its hunger for gas in Central Asia.

(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)