Tag Archives: Turkmenistan

Turkmen President woos Qatar

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov invited Qatar’s business community to invest in the construction of the Turkmenistan- Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline. The first investment agreement was signed by the consortium shareholders in April 2015. The project is considered pivotal in connecting South and Central Asia as well as for securing the long-term future of Afghanistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Turkmen president performs Hajj

MAY 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov completed a visit to Saudi Arabia, where he performed the Hajj to Medina and Mecca. In Saudi Arabia, Mr Berdymukhamedov spoke to the head of Islamic Development Bank, Ahmad Mohamed Ali Al-Madani, about potential investments in Turkmenistan’s infrastructure projects.

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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Turkmenistan returns body

APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan returned the body of one of the workers from an Azerbaijani oil rig who had been swept away in a storm in December. Around three dozen people were killed when the storm smashed into oil rigs in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea in the world’s worst off-shore oil rig accident for two decades. Many of the bodies have been carried by currents across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Business comment: BTC fails to live up to hype

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In the early 2000s, the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline was hailed as a key component of the New Silk Road, designed by the West for the West. The dream might now be over.

Western oil producers wanted a pipeline that would pump Caspian oil to world markets without having to pass through Russia.

Everyone in Washington DC was excited. “Happiness is multiple pipelines” was the slogan that could be heard espoused by US diplomats and oil companies. It was even seen on bumper stickers around the US capital.

The 1b barrels/day dream pipeline was inaugurated in 2005 and relied on Azerbaijan’s largest oil fields as well as on Kazakh and Turkmen trans-Caspian shipments.

The decade-long excitement, however, seems to have hit a wall as Kazakh oil shipments have now faded away.

Experts don’t believe shipments will resume anytime soon. Tengizchevroil appears to have let its contract with BTC lapse. Kazakhstan’s Aktau port management has said it doesn’t foresee oil shipments from Tengiz resuming.

At a time of low oil prices and rising extraction prices, cutting expenditure on shipments of oil across the Caspian Sea was the obvious move for Kazakh producers.

Tengiz, and Kashagan whenever it comes online, will use the expanded Caspian Pipeline Consortium for future exports.

This choice will isolate Azerbaijan at a time when it is under the spotlight to become Europe’s new gas provider. The take-home from this story is that corporate interest, in the long run, overrides diplomatic objectives.

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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Gulf trade corridor becomes operational, Uzbek government says

APRIL 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s government said that an agreement signed in 2011 with Turkmenistan, Iran and Oman to establish what it described as a Central Asia-Persian Gulf Trade Corridor had finally become operational. The deal was agreed to boost trade between the regions. Some analysts, though, have derided the deal as window-dressing.

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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Oil Tanker catches fire in Azerbaijan-Turkmen Caspian Sea sector

APRIL 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A crew member died after a Russian oil tanker caught fire in the southern section of the Caspian Sea, between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Coastal guards from the three littoral countries joined forces to extinguish the fire and rescue the rest of the crew. The tanker was not carrying oil at the time of the accident. Last December, a fire at offshore oil and gas platforms killed more than 30 Azerbaijani workers.

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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Turkmen ministry plans to boost CNG

APRIL 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Turkmen energy ministry said it plans to produce 450,000 tonnes of compressed natural gas (CNG) this year, betting on the high demand for fuel in neighbouring countries. The Turkmen government doesn’t generally publish data on its CNG production, but the tone of the release showed that this might be an increase compared to last year.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Turkmen President reprimand officials

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov reprimanded Shamukhamet Durdyliyev, deputy PM and a member of the Presidential Administration, for the lack of progress made in a programme to beautify Ashgabat.

This is an apparent continuation of his penchant for publicly humiliating officials he feels have been underperforming. Ashgabat’s city administration has felt Mr Berdymukhamedov’s wrath before. Last August, he sacked Ashgabat’s mayor, Redzhepgeldi Nurmammedov, also for failing to improve his much loved capital city.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Turkmenistan increases gas to China

APRIL 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan increased gas shipments to China by a third in Q1 2016, Chinese state media reported. According to Xinhua news agency, Turkmenistan exported 10.6b cubic metres of gas between Jan and March 2016 via the Central Asia-China pipeline, which runs through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The total annual capacity of the pipeline is 55b cubic metres.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Russia Turkmenistan’s key ally, says Berdymukhamedov

APRIL 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Seemingly wanting to curry favour with the Kremlin, Turkmen president Kurbangkuly Berdymukhamedov told the visiting Alexander Zhilkin, governor of the Russian region of Astrakhan, that Russia was Turkmenistan’s most important ally. Turkmenistan and Russia have rowed furiously over the past few years over gas supplies and the treatment of a Russian mobile phone operator. Turkmenistan has increasingly looked east for allies.

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(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)