SEPT. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has come under increased international pressure to allow more monitors from the OSCE’s ODHIR into the country to monitor a parliamentary election in November. The OSCE cancelled its monitoring mission because it said the authorities in Azerbaijan had permitted only half the requested monitors.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A fire broke out at an oil pit outside Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan. High winds spread the fire over a 5 square km area. Media said the fire injured 2 people.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 23 2015, YEREVAN (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia wants to increase by four-fold electricity exports to Iran, a senior government official said, highlighting the important regional economic position that the Iranian government will hold once international sanctions are lifted, as expected, later this year or next.
At a policy meeting in Yerevan, Areg Galstyan, the Armenian deputy minister for energy and natural resources said a third electricity transmission line to Iran was being built that would increase exports.
“Now in a year we export 1.8b kilowatt hours of energy to Iran and the capacity can be increased to 6.9b. kWh per year,” he said at a press conference. “We hope that the construction of a third Armenia-Iran high voltage electricity transmission line will be finished in 2018.”
The growing trade and diplomatic relationship between Armenia and Iran has become increasingly important for the government in Yerevan. It is short of regional allies. Armenia and Azerbaijan are still officially at war over the disputed province of Nagorno-Karabakh and its ties with Turkey have been broken over allegations of a genocide 100 years ago, meaning that it has turned to Iran as partner.
And with Iran on the brink of being accepted back into the international community after a deal with the United States and others over its nuclear weapons programme, relation – trade, diplomatic and cultural – are set to grow.
Armenia sees itself as a growing regional electricity exporter. As well as increasing exports to Iran it also wants to increase them to Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
ALMATY, SEPT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Korea-based Samsung Engineering said it was suspending construction work at a 1,320 megawatt coal-fired power plant near Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan due to financing issues, throwing into doubt the feasibility of the $2.2b project that the Kazakh government has said is vital to meet growing demand for electricity.
Alluding to the impact of an economic downturn that has hit the economies and currencies of Central Asia, Samsung Engineering said it was worried that Kazakhstan couldn’t guarantee it would buy the power that the plant was due to generate.
“Samsung Engineering has been forced to temporarily halt the operation of the project because of an issue with the Kazakhstan government over the guaranteed purchase of the power to be produced from the project,” the company’s CEO Park Jung-heum told The Korea Times. He didn’t say when the project might resume.
The Kazakh government has not commented.
A consortium led by Samsung Engineering and Korean Electric Power Corp. won the project tender in 2009. The project was due to be completed in 2020 and would have supplied 9% of Kazakhstan’s total electricity demand.
The power plant was due to cost $2.2b to build. Korean Eximbank and Korea Trade Insurance Corp. pledged additional loans of around $3.5b.
In August, Samsung also said it was worried about the strength of Kazakhstan’s banking sector which is saddled with a large amount of bad debt, a legacy of the 2008/9 Global Financial Crisis.
Kazakhstan needs to increase its electricity generation capacity to power its export-oriented industrial sector and to feed its increasingly energy hungry population or face the prospect of black-outs. World Bank data showed that in 2014, Kazakhstan consumed around 88b kilowatt hours of electricity. In 2000, it consumed 48b kilowatt hours, figures that highlight the growth in demand.
Samsung’s decision to halt its big project at Balkhash is a serious setback for Kazakhstan’s energy plans.
It is also a litmus test for Kazakhstan’s ability to follow through with major infrastructure projects it planned during a period of high oil prices and steady export revenues.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Central Bank bought $200m-worth of tenge to protect its currency after it broke through the psychologically important 300/$1 barrier. Despite pledging not to intervene in the value of the tenge, the Kazakh Central Bank has spent over $700m this month on its defence.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP said it would extend DNV GL’s contract in Azerbaijan’s leading natural gas field for the second stage of operations. Oslo-based DNV GL provides marine warranty and consulting for oil and gas fields globally. The second phase of Shah Deniz sets it up for a massive expansion that will eventually mean more gas being sent to Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s parliament, a rubber-stamping chamber for President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, passed a law which will impose more tax on tobacco and alcohol. Turkmenistan has been looking to raise more tax during the current economic downturn.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has begun work on the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) project, part of the route that will carry gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, local media quoted Rovnag Abdullayev, the chairman of Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR, as saying. Mr Abdullayev said that 400km of pipes had been delivered to TANAP.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Causing something of an upset, the Georgian rugby team beat Tonga 17-10 in their opening match of the Rugby World Cup in England. Georgia has the best national rugby team in the former Soviet Union and is ranked 13th in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s food safety agency, seized 48.5 tonnes of Chinese canned fish being transported via railway to Kyrgyzstan from Estonia. The cargo was sent back to Estonia because its certificates did not comply with Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) rules. Canned fish from China is shipped to Estonia before being sent to Central Asia. The seizure highlights just how complicated transporting products across the EEU has become.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
