Category Archives: Uncategorised

Petronas to start drilling in Turkmen Caspian Sea

MARCH 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Petronas Carigali, a subsidiary of Malaysia’s largest energy company, said it is ready to start drilling at the Garagol Deniz West field in the Turkmen section of the Caspian Sea. The company is also about to complete a pipeline connection from the field to the onshore processing facility. Petronas is an active player in Turkmenistan’s gas sector.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Armenian CBank cuts rates

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Armenian Central Bank said it cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point to 8.25%, just over a month after the previous rate cut. The Bank said this is in line with the policy of easing the cost of borrowing and other monetary instruments. Economic activity in the country is shrinking and the Central Bank wants to boost it gradually by cutting rates.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Azerbaijan’s SOCAR sells Petkim shares

MARCH 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR said it sold part of its stake in the Petkim petrochemical project in Turkey. SOCAR’s subsidiary Socar Turkey Enerji, which controls its Turkish operations, said it sold a 2.75% stake for 147mn liras ($51mn). Socar Turkey Enerji still retains a 56.32% stake in Petkim. SOCAR has been looking to raise cash recently.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

BPC Engineering and Kazakh gov. make turbine deal

MARCH 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – BPC Engineering, the Russian distributor of California-based Capstone Turbine, said it reached an agreement with the Kazakh government to supply seven micro-turbines for the Beineu-Shymkent gas pipeline. Around 50 micro-turbines are needed in the pipeline, part of a $3.5b project to pump gas from west to south Kazakhstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Kazakhstan releases activists

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court of appeal in Kazakhstan suspended prison sentences handed out to two Kazakh activists in January. Yermek Narymbayev and Serikzhan Mambetalin, imprisoned for posting messages on Facebook that the authorities said spread racial hatred, were released from prison and put under house arrest. Human rights activists saw this as a conciliatory move towards the EU ahead of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to Brussels.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Business comment: SOCAR & The EU

APRIL 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR said it hopes to solve the DESFA affair by the end of the year, but should Fluxys’ shareholders officially decide to back out of an earlier plan to buy part of the Greek company, Azerbaijan’s state-owned company will find it hard to comply with EU regulations.

The so-called Third Energy Package is a set of regulations the EU adopted in 2009 with the objective of liberalising its energy market, chiefly by separating the ownership of upstream, midstream and downstream operations, a process known as “unbundling” in Brussels.

According to these rules, SOCAR cannot buy, as it wished, a majority stake in DESFA, the Greek gas distributor.

That would effectively mean that the gas supplier would own the distributor as well.

SOCAR also owns a majority stake in TANAP, a pipeline running across Turkey. SOCAR is allowed to keep its 58% share in TANAP because it lies outside EU jurisdiction.

But when in 2013 it agreed a deal to buy 66% of the debt-ridden Greek company for €400m ($454m), the European Commission stepped in and froze the purchase. It said that SOCAR could own 49% of DESF but no more.

For a year now, SOCAR has tried to find buyers for part of the 66% stake it agreed to buy. If Fluxys flakes, Italian Snam Rete Gas and Dutch Gasunie could be next in line.

Even though SOCAR has become a good friend of the EU for its key role in the completion of the Southern Gas Corridor project, seen by Europe as a viable alternative to gas from Russia, it apparently cannot escape the severe hand of the EU’s army of regulators.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

New refinery opens in Tajikistan

MARCH 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A new refinery opened in Tajikistan’s northern town of Kanibadam, a major boost to the country’s oil products output. Naftrasom, a private company owned by Nosir Usmonov, built the plant with a $3.5m investment. The refinery will have a capacity of 70,000 tonnes. As confirmed by Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, who attended the inauguration, Tajikistan will import raw materials for the plant, mostly from Kazakhstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Ex-Georgian PM buys a giant tree and sails if down the Black Sea coast

MARCH 24 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Bidzina Ivanishvili is known in Georgia through his many different guises. He is a former PM and the de facto leader of the Georgian Dream ruling coalition. He is a billionaire and the country’s richest man. He collects fine art, such as Picasso’s, and keeps a personal zoo of exotic animals, such as penguins, zebras and sharks.

Now, courting more headlines and controversy, can be added the title of tree lover, or tree thief, depending on your point of view.

Pictures from Georgia showed workmen digging up and then moving by barge a 135-year-old tulip tree, the height of a 12-storey build- ing, 30km along the Black Sea coast to Mr Ivanishvili’s garden at one of his homes.

This prompted a barrage of outrage on social media across Georgia as well as from tree experts who questioned whether the tree would survive.

German forestry expert Walter Benneckendorf said the tree would die. “Theoretically it is possible to replant even older trees, but only if it would have been replanted every five years, so the roots are used to it,” he told the Conway Bulletin. “Replanting a 135-year-old tree without the previous measure will result without a question in the tree’s death.”

Activists also said there were only a few dozen tulip trees left in Georgia.

Still in televised remarks, Mr Ivanishvili said that he paid for the tree legally.

“Giant trees are my hobby. I am developing a park where I think it is appropriate,” he said without a trace of irony.

Either way, people on the Black Sea coast were, for a day, treated to the sight of an upright tree apparently sailing serenely along Georgia’s shoreline.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Kyrgyz-Russian Dev. Fund to change rules

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz PM Temir Sariyev said that the misfiring Kyrgyz-Russian Development Fund would reduce the minimum loan it is prepared to hand out to $1m from $3m. The Fund had been criticised as too heavily geared towards large businesses, because of the high loan requirement and the co-financing clauses. Earlier this month Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev sacked Nursulu Akhmetova as chair of the Fund.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Tajik migrant workers appear to be most vulnerable to IS recruitment

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – DUSHANBE — In an apparent effort to shift responsibility for radicalisation away from Tajikistan, the Tajik Prosecutor General, Yusuf Rakhmon, said that around 85% of Tajik citizens who have joined IS in Syria and Iraq were migrant workers recruited in Russia.

Mr Rakhmon also told the state- owned Jumuhuriyat newspaper that official calculations showed 1,094 Tajik citizens fighting for IS.

Tajikistan has been criticised recently for being a soft touch for IS recruiters. Last year a highly regarded Tajik police chief, who had previously travelled to the United States on training missions, joined IS, handing the extremist group one of its biggest publicity coups.

Mr Rakhmon’s comments are important as, although independent research has suggested that disgruntled Tajik migrant workers who have been losing their jobs in the Russian recession are vulnerable to IS recruitment, there has previously been no official acknowledgement of the issue.

Also, the number of Tajik recruits to IS is higher than Mr Rakhmon has previously noted. In June, he said that there were around 400 Tajik fighters with IS. This was updated in November by the Tajik security service which said that 700 Tajiks had joined IS, although 300 had been killed.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)