Category Archives: Uncategorised

Kyrgyz opposition threatens President

NOV. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Omurbek Tekebayev, one of the opposition figures in Kyrgyzstan being investigated for allegedly setting up offshore accounts in Kyrgyzstan, said that he had started collecting signatures to impeach president Almazbek Atambayev. Mr Tekebayev is a member so the Ata Meken party which walked out of a government coalition in October over Mr Atambayev’s plans to hold a referendum in December that would extend the powers of the PM.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Total signs deal to produce gas at Azerbaijan’s Abershon

NOV. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — French energy company Total signed an agreement to develop the first phase of the Absheron gas and condensate field in Azerbaijan, a major boost for the country’s oil and gas sector, although it also said that production levels would be far lower than originally projected.

Total discovered Absheron in 2011 and owns a 40% stake in the project. Other shareholders include state- owned SOCAR (40%) and ENGIE, a French utility company (20%).

The company had said the field, off the Absheron peninsula, around 60km from Baku, would produce 5b cubic metres (bcm) of gas annually in the first stages and between 7 and 8 bcm at a later stage. But Total’s latest press release told a different story.

“The development involves the drilling of one well at a water depth of 450 meters. Production from this high pressure field will be around 35 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day, including a significant portion of condensate,” Total said.

This means that yearly production volume would be around 2.1 bcm, 60% smaller than originally planned.

Analysts said that the Azerbaijani government has pressured Total into producing at Abershon ahead of the original target start date, possibly forcing it to cut output targets.

“If they previously planned to produce first gas in 2022, now they talk about the beginning of 2020,” Ilham Shaban, head of the Caspian Barrel research outfit, told the Vestnik Kavkaza website.

Absheron’s gas will compensate for declining domestic production in Azerbaijan, according to Total.

“The produced gas will supply Azerbaijan’s domestic market,” the company said.

Azerbaijan’s gas production has flatlined in recent years to around 19bcm and it is poised to decline this year.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Kazakhstan-based Central Asia Metals expands

NOV. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-listed copper producer Central Asia Metals said it bought an 80% interest in a copper exploration property in northern Kazakhstan. The company said that it paid local company GRK-Aksu around $1m for the stake and has pledged to invest another $1m in the deposit in 2017.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Kazakh mayor to bring London cabs

NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gabidulla Abdrakhimov, mayor of Shymkent in southern Kazakhstan, flew to London to meet British business representatives and to float the idea of bringing the iconic London cabs to his city. Gipsy cabs are commonplace in Kazakhstan, although taxi companies and ride-hailing apps have gained an increasing share of the market in recent years. In 2012, Magnesium Bronze’s London cabs became the only official taxi brand in Baku, Azerbaijan.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Russia approves military deals with Uzbekistan

NOV. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian PM Dmitri Medvedev approved an agreement to develop military technology ties between Russia and Uzbekistan, an early indication that ties between the two countries are already improving less than two months after the death of former president Islam Karimov. Acting president Shavkat Mirziyoyev has made improving Uzbekistan’s international relations a priority. Russian president Vladimir Putin was one of the first foreign leaders to visit Uzbekistan after the death of Karimov in September.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Azerbaijan-based Zenith receives payments

NOV. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — An Azerbaijan-based subsidiary of Canada’s Zenith Energy said it received the first payments for its oil sales at three onshore fields it is developing with state-owned SOCAR. Zenith Aran Oil and SOCAR had signed a production sharing agreement in March. Zenith has an 80% share in the Muradkhanli, Jafarli and Zardab fields for the next 25 years. SOCAR will retain the remaining 20%. Oil from these fields is sold internationally at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. On the same day, British investment company Gunsynd invested £100,000 ($125,000) in Zenith Energy, as part of a £500,000 fundraising effort.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Japan’s Mitsubishi signs second power plant deal in Uzbekistan

NOV. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation won a contract to build a 900MW combined-cycle power plant in the Ferghana Valley in eastern Uzbekistan, a critical development for the country’s power generation sector.

This is Mitsubishi’s second deal in Uzbekistan in the past month. In October, it agreed to build a second co-generation station at the Navoi thermal power plant. In July 2015, Mitsubishi had won a tender to build a fertiliser plant in Navoi.

Mitsubishi said that the Japanese and Uzbek government will finance construction of the Turakurgan Thermal Power Station.

“This project will be financed by an Official Development Assistance (ODA) Loan provided by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and Uzbek government funds,” the company said in a statement.

The parties did not disclose the value of the contract, this secrecy is not unusual in Uzbekistan, but an earlier assessment of the project said it would cost $704m.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Kazakh President considers name change for Astana

ALMATY, NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s parliament proposed renaming the capital city, Astana, after president Nursultan Nazarbayev.

It is now for Mr Nazarbayev, 76, to agree to accept the proposal or not. He has previously rejected a similar proposal but over the past weeks and months momentum appears to have built up towards embellishing Mr Nazarbayev’s persona, which some describe as a personality cult.

Last week the Central Bank unveiled a new bank note with his portrait on it, dozens of university, libraries and schools are named after him and in 2011, a statue of him was erected by a park in Almaty.

The proposal to rename Astana, the city that Mr Nazarbayev built on the Kazakh steppe, was buried in the last paragraph of a lengthy monologue lauding the president’s achievement since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Mr Nazarbayev has been Kazakhstan’s only post-Soviet leader.

Astana means capital in Kazakh and has been developed as a brand. Many of Mr Nazarbayev’s pet projects — an airline, a cycling team, a football team — are called Astana and wear the yellow and blue of Kazakhstan.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Kazakh court sentences IS sympathiser

NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Astana sentenced a man to six years in jail for promoting literature supporting IS in Syria. The unnamed man reportedly encouraged his followers on social media sites to join him in Syria to fight for IS.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan warn about cold weather

NOV. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Extreme cold weather forced schools to close and roads to be blocked off in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The unseasonably cold weather recorded a temperature of minus 40 Celsius in Ust Kamenogorsk in eastern Kazakhstan. In Astana, regarded as the second coldest capital in the world after Ulaan Bator, temperatures of minus 35 Celsius were 30 degrees lower than the seasonal average.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)