Category Archives: Uncategorised

Paramount opens defence plant in Kazakhstan

DEC. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — South Africa’s Paramount, a private company that manufactures equipment for the police and military, opened a new plant in Astana to produce a version of their Marauder armoured personnel carrier. Kazakhstan Paramount Engineering is a joint venture with state-owned Kazakhstan Engineering Distribution. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev attended the opening.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Armenian hackers attack Azerbaijan

NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian hackers broke into the Azerbaijani Central Bank network and stole personal data from thousands of people, media reported. This is the second hacker attack on Azerbaijani state websites this year. In June, hackers stole thousands of people’s data from the Azerbaijani customs website.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Turkmenistan not doing enough to attract Western firms -US

DEC. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – If Turkmenistan wants to realise its potential and become one of the world’s top energy exporters it should improve its foreign investment climate, Reuters quoted Daniel Rosenblum, deputy assistant secretary for Central Asia at the U.S. Department of State, as saying on a trip to Ashgabat.

Western companies have found it difficult to enter the Turkmen energy sector despite an apparent abundance of hydrocarbon wealth. It is estimated that Turkmenistan holds the world’s four largest gas reserves.

Turkmenistan only offers Western companies service contracts on its various gas projects and not the production sharing agreements that many want. And this, Mr Rosenblum said, would hold back Turkmenistan’s development as a gas exporter.

“A critical element of success is to create the right mix of incentives,” he said according to the Reuters report.

Most of Turkmenistan’s gas flows to China through a network of pipelines that cross Central Asia but Turkmen officials have said they want to widen the client base. This includes pumping gas to Europe and India.

Turkmenistan will officially begin work on the TAPI pipeline that will, it hopes, eventually pump gas directly to consumers in India. Its an ambitious project and one that Western companies had previously expressed interest in.

The lack of a production sharing agreement, though, coupled with a poor record for corruption and the sheer ambition of building a 1,700km pipeline across unstable Afghanistan, with all its security concerns, has deterred potential suitors.

In a thinly veiled criticism of Turkmenistan, Mr Rosenblum told a conference: “Land-locked countries with potentially large resources, such as Turkmenistan, need to move expeditiously to capture market opportunities since their competitors are not idle.”

Although he wasn’t specific, Mr Rosenblum appeared to be saying that Western companies with their expertise and know-how would be able to help Turkmenistan speed up development of its hydro-carbon sector.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Tajik and Uzbek authorities hold meeting

DEC. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan and Uzbekistan plan to hold bilateral foreign ministry level talks in Dushanbe for the first time on Dec. 17/18, a step towards improving relations. Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have been locked in a row over water. Tajikistan wants to build what would be one of the world’s largest hyrdopower dams. Uzbekistan has complained that the dam will reduce water flow to its fields of cotton.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Kazakh Central Bank skips meeting

DEC. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Central Bank cancelled its monthly monetary policy meeting for the second consecutive month, disappointing markets which were looking for guidance on future policy. The Central Bank said that money markets were too unstable for it to announce policy. Critics said it had lost control of the tenge.

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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Georgia strips Saakashvili of his citizenship

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili signed a decree stripping Mikheil Saakashvili of his Georgian citizenship.

When he was in power between 2003 and 2013 Mr Saakashvili painted himself as proud Georgian patriot and it is likely that losing his Georgian citizenship will hurt and even humiliate him.

Under Georgian laws, though, dual citizenship is illegal.

In May this year, Mr Saakashvili took Ukrainian citizenship, allowing him to take up an offer by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to be governor in Odessa.

This meant that, formally, the government had to strip Mr Saakashvili of his Georgian citizenship.

“Based on the law of Georgian citizenship, President Giorgi Margvelashvili signed a decree terminating Mikheil Saakashvili’s citizenship due to his acquisition of a foreign country’s nationality,” the Georgian presidential press service said.

The AFP news agency quoted Mr Saakashvili as telling Georgia’s Rus- tavi-2 TV station that he was angry.

“They can take away my passport, but they can’t do anything with my love for my Motherland,” he said.

Although the constitution bans Georgians from taking dual nationality it doesn’t force foreigners taking Georgian citizenship to renounce their original nationality.

Georgia’s prosecutor-general also wants to arrest Mr Saakashvili and charge him with various crimes. Mr Saakashvili has always said the charges are politically motivated. Several of Mr Saakashvili’s former government colleagues and government officials have been arrested.

The European Union and the West have also warned Georgia’s government not to politicise the criminal system.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Kazakh president signs NGO law

DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev signed into law the creation of an agency under the ministry of justice that will be charged with the responsibility of approving funding to non-government agencies. The law has proved controversial with campaigners saying that it is similar to a law introduced by Russia which banned NGOs from taking funding from foreign organisations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Georgian president appoints new head of pres. admin

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili appointed Giorgi Abashishvili, his economics adviser, as head of his presidential administration. Media said Mr Abashishvili was the third head of the presidential administration since Mr Margvelashvili took office in 2013.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas and Vitol strike $3b futures deal

DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company, said it reached an agreement with international oil trader Vitol for the forward sale of crude oil for up to $3b, a deal that the debt-ridden Kazakh producer needs to maintain financial stability during a period of low oil prices.

Vitol will buy oil from Kazmunaigas’ share of oil produced at the Tengiz field in western Kazakhstan and then pumped by the CPC pipeline around the northern tip of the Caspian Sea to Novorossiysk in Russia.

Kazmunaigas, commonly known as KMG, will receive advance payments in the short term.

“It is expected that KMG will be able to draw the first tranche within 2-4 months,” the company said in a statement.

Neither company disclosed the amount of oil that will be traded and the duration of the contract, but a Bulletin calculation showed that the deal could range between 3 and 5 years, depending on how much of the 2-3m tonnes of oil KMG exports each year from Tengiz Vitol will buy and how big the discount is.

By committing to the sale of futures, Kazmunaigas earnsmuch needed cash in the short term to cover its outstanding debts. But there will be a reasonable discount which will manifest itself over the next few years.

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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Tajik court sentences IRPT activist

NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Tajikistan handed a 9-1⁄2 year prison sentence to an activist of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) which, until September, had been the country’s only opposition party. Hasan Rahimov had been the IRPT chief in the southern Farkhor district. He is the first of two dozen IRPT activists to stand trial on various terrorism charges. The IRPT says the charges are politically motivated.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)