APRIL 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s parliament rejected a bill to write-off part of the Hradzan cement plant’s debt, casting doubts on the company’s survival. The bill was designed to pardon 510m dram ($1.1) in overdue taxes. Last year VTB Bank Armenia took control of the plant. The plant’s total debt is estimated at 935m drams ($1.9m).
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
TBILISI, APRIL 27 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — The Georgian government and BitFury, a US company with a base in Tbilisi that develops technology used by the Bitcoin virtual currency, will jointly develop a land registry system which they hope will set new global standards.
The new model for the National Agency of Public Registry will reduce bureaucratic practices and costs for citizens, according to officials.
“By building a blockchain-based property registry, Georgia can show the world that we are a modern, transparent and corruption-free country that can lead the world in changing the way land titling is done,” Georgian media quoted Papuna Ugrekhelidze, the agency’s chairman, as saying.
Blockchain technology is a data- base system that Bitcoin has pioneered. It is considered the most efficient system to log data.
The Agency of Public Registry said the cost of a land registry transactions will drop to virtually zero.
Last September, BitFury said it would invest $100m in a new Technology Park in the Gldani district of Tbilisi. BitFury already operates a data centre in Gori, 70km west of Tbilisi.
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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) NUKUS/Uzbekistan — This city, the capital of Karakalpakstan in west Uzbekistan, has yet to benefit from the shiny upgrades that have advanced the country’s larger cities.
A few new apartment blocks aside, there is little sign of redevelopment. There are no new malls and no new roads.
The airport is tiny and time warped, with just one conveyor belt for luggage. Just beyond the city limits is miles of parched desert scattered with saxaul trees, scrubby bush and abandoned poultry farms. It is a depressing place.
The one gem in Nukus’ crown is the Savitsky Museum.
Attracting a few thousand international visitors a year, it houses a 90,000-strong collection of world- class Russian avant-garde artworks. Igor Savitksy, a Kiev-born artist and collector, is celebrated for single handedly saving these works in the 1950s by hiding them away in Nukus, far from the disapproving eyes of the USSR’s fanatical leaders.
Recently the museum has been in the news after its long-serving and highly dedicated director, Marinika Babanazarova, was fired for unspecified reasons. To fans of the museum, it appeared that Nukus’ one shining light was in danger of going out.
As I toured the museum I met a curator who explained some of the more famous art pieces to me. Tentatively, I told her that I’d read the reports about Marinika being fired and I asked where she was now. The curator’s eyes fell to the floor.
“She is here in Nukus. We hope she will come back one day. We miss her, but we cannot break the system,” she said nervously.
She looked more hopeful when the conversation switched to the new wing of the museum which staff hope will attract more visitors.
Whether it will bring back Marinika remains to be seen.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company KMG EP said its revenues for Q1 2016 were nearly 50% lower in US dollar terms than in Q1 2015, highlighting the impact of the depreciation of the tenge on Kazakh businesses. KMG EP data is a good indicator of the overall health of Kazakhstan’s state owned energy company Kazmunaigas, a main driver of the Kazakh economy.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Data from Georgia’s Central Bank showed savings held in Georgian banks dropped by 2.4% between February and March. At the end of March, Georgia’s commercial banks held 24.7b lari, a drop of 800m lari. This is the lowest savings level since November last year. The Central Bank is concerned that inflation has slowed. Like the rest of the region, Georgia has been vulnerable to a fall in its lari currency.
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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Nostrum Oil & Gas shares jumped 6% on Wednesday to 295.25p after the company announced quarterly results, its highest price for over three months.
Investors were happy with the company’s performance although Nostrum said a scheduled maintenance and low oil prices had hindered its performance in Q1 2016.
“It has been a steady start to the first quarter with production broadly in line with expectations taking into account the first part of the annual maintenance,” Kai-Uwe Kessel, Nostrum’s CEO said.
Investors also appreciated Nostrum’s position that cost-cutting remained a top priority.
“We continue to focus on reducing our operating costs internally and I am pleased with the progress we are making,” Mr Kessel said.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
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)
APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s energy minister Kanat Bozumbayev said he expects production at the Kashagan offshore field to resume by the end of 2016. Mr Buzumbayev’s statement sounded like a rebuttal to an earlier comment by CNPC, which said it saw Kashagan production resuming in mid-2017.
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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Hollywood A-list actor George Clooney attended a memorial in Yerevan to mark the 101st anniversary of what Armenia describes as a genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks against Armenians. Turkey has denied it was a genocide and has instead said that thousands of Armenians died in fighting linked to World War I. It’s unclear, exactly, how Mr Clooney is linked to Armenia and its genocide claim.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s minister of economy Yerbolat Dossayev and businessmen Yuri Pak and Berik Kaniyev sold their shares in Kazinvestbank, a mid-ranking bank in Kazakhstan, for an undisclosed amount. Gaukhar Kapparova, who received 11.3% of the bank’s shares after her husband died last year, is the only shareholder left from the previous structure.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
