Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Manat stabilised, says Azerbaijan’s Bank chairman

MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Elman Rustamov, chairman of Azerbaijan’s Central Bank, said the manat currency will maintain a stable exchange rate with the US dollar for the rest of the year, dismissing rumours of further depreciation. The Central Bank devalued the manat in February 2015 and later, in December, ditched the currency peg to the US dollar. It is now worth half its Jan. 2015 value.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Editorial: Gay rights in Armenia and Azerbaijan

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A report by the lobby group IGLA-Europe makes for discouraging reading. Propping up the league table on gay, lesbian and transgender rights in 49 countries across Europe and its near abroad are Azerbaijan and Armenia, split by Russia.

They scored 5% and 7%. Above them, halfway up the table, was Georgia with 30%. The fine-print said that the report was primarily concerned with the legal framework established in each country to allow gays, lesbians and transgender people the same rights and protections as everybody else.

The IGLA’s assessment, in Armenia and Azerbaijan at least, was that this appears to be near zero.

And this is reflected in news reports of attacks on homosexuals and other minorities in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Importantly, though, it is not just people with different sexual orienta- tions who are potential targets in these countries. The same group-think extends towards opposition activists, overly pious Muslims and journalists. They are all marginalised. This whole mentality needs changing.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Russia says it needs to approve Turkmen-Azeri trans-Caspian pipeline

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s ambassador-at-large for Caspian affairs, Igor Bratchikov said that the Kremlin will not allow the construction of any projects across the Caspian Sea that are not sanctioned by all littoral states. “Unilateral action on construction of Trans-Caspian pipelines is inadmissible,” Mr Bratchikov said. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have discussed for years the possibility of building a trans-Caspian gas pipeline.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Azerbaijani SOCAR announces gas deal with Russia

MAY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The head of SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state energy company, Rovnag Abdullayev, announced that the company would buy from Russia’s Gazprom 5b cubic metres annually. SOCAR needs the gas to hit growing demand and also to inject into oil wells to expand production. Relations between Russia and Azerbaijan have been improving.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

ADB lines up $1.5b loan for Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz

MAY 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it is considering a series of loans worth a total of $1.5b to fund the second phase of Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz offshore gas project, local media reported.

In March, the ADB had said it was considering lending $450m to Shah Deniz, which will be the main supplier for the so-called Southern Gas Corridor network of pipelines designed to pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe.

“The proposed investment plan will support the Azerbaijani government’s efforts to finance Shah Deniz- 2 project,” the bank said in a statement. “The investment plan is expected to be approved on August 22 by ADB’s board of directors.”

A consortium led by BP and SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, which will be the beneficiary of ADB’s loans.

The ADB said it will reach a final decision on the amount of the loans after a site visit in June.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Azerbaijan’s oil production drops

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s oil production fell by 1.6% to 13.9m tonnes in Jan.-April 2016 compared to the same period last year, Reuters quoted an anonymous government source as saying. Azerbaijan’s oil production has been slowing for years, despite the government putting BP under increased pressure to stop the slow- down. Oil is the mainstay of the Azerbaijani economy and a drop in production means that government revenues fall.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Armenia and Azerbaijan ranked as worst for LGBT people

MAY 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia and Azerbaijan are the worst places in Europe and the South Caucasus to be a homosexual, bisexual, lesbian or a transgender person, the IGLA-Europe lobby group said in a report focused on the legal framework that countries have developed for equality issues.

Of the 49 countries ranked in its index, Azerbaijan was ranked bottom with a score of just under 5%, followed by Russia with 6.5% and then Armenia with around 7%. Georgia was the second highest ranked former Soviet state in 30th position with a score of around 30%. Estonia was ranked in 21st position.

Azerbaijan has been cracking down on opposition groups and media over the past year. European officials have said that this political crackdown has also involved a more general crackdown on civil rights — including against the gay and the lesbian communities.

IGLA-Europe agreed.

“Azerbaijan’s LGBTI community continued to face severe challenges in 2015,” it said in its report. “Numer- ous violent attacks were carried out against LGBTI individuals; several murders were reported and investigated throughout the year.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Italy’s Saipem wins $1.5b Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz contract

MAY 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A consortium led by Italian oil and gas service company Saipem won a $1.5b contract to transport and install a deepwater subsea production system for the second phase development of the Shah Deniz offshore gas field in Azerbaijan.

Shah Deniz, operated by BP, is central to Azerbaijan’s gas production. Once its second phase comes online, it will be the cornerstone of the so-called Southern Gas Corridor, a network of pipelines that will feed gas to Europe from the Caspian Sea.

Saipem’s management said the company will receive a fee of $1.3b from the overall deal.

“This award further strengthens Saipem’s key role in the construction of the Southern Gas Corridor where the company has a total of four contracts, in the upstream segment and in gas transportation infrastructure both onshore and offshore,” Stefano Cao, Saipem CEO, said in a statement.

Saipem, 30% owned by Eni, owns stakes in the other two companies in the consortium that won the contract – BOS Shelf and Star Gulf.

SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state energy company, owns 96% of BOS Shelf. Star Gulf owns the remaining 4%. Saipem owns 100% of Star Gulf.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Business comment: Corruption in telecoms

MAY 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Telia Company, the re-branded version of Swedish company TeliaSonera, scored a small victory this week as Swedish prosecutors dropped a bribery case related to its dealings in Azerbaijan in 2008.

Allegedly, it paid bribes to public officials to obtain licences for its subsidiary, Azercell, but prosecutors said they couldn’t prove their claims.

This, though, still leaves Telia, and other companies, entangled in an investigation linked to corruption in Uzbekistan, where they allegedly paid hundreds of millions of US dollars to obtain licences.

The beneficiary of the bribes is said to be Gulnara Karimova, the once-extravagant eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

VimpelCom, an Amsterdam- based Russian company, has already settled its Uzbek bribery case with US and Dutch courts by paying a penalty of $795m, effectively admitting wrongdoing.

The Uzbek case had negative repercussions across Scandinavia.

In Sweden, perhaps in an effort to erase recent memories, TeliaSonera changed its name, colours and branding and is now registered as Telia Company.

In Norway, heads started rolling last year at the state-owned telecoms company Telenor, which owns 33% in VimpelCom.

CEO Svein Aaser was sacked in November and the Norwegian former CEO of VimpelCom Jo Lunder was arrested a few days later.

Last autumn, both Telia and Telenor said they wanted out of their operations in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, allegedly because of market pressures, but their exit, rebranding and apologies can only really be read as last minute attempts to pull their hands out of the cookie jar.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Editorial: Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh

MAY 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s parliament has started to debate whether to recognise Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state. This is an unnecessary and inflammatory move at a tense time for the disputed region.

Last month the worst fighting in two decades broke out around Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia-backed separatists and Azerbaijani forces.

Now Armenia, apparently keen to make a point, appears to be goading Azerbaijan by threatening to recognise the region as independent. It may have been controlled by Armenia-backed rebels since a ceasefire was agreed in 1994 but, officially at least, Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan.

If parliament goes all the way and recognises the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh, it will set Armenia apart in the international community. Armenia has sympathisers but few will back it.

It’ll also put its neighbour, Georgia, in a particularly difficult position. Georgia has to contend with two self-declared independent states on its territory — South Ossetia and Abkhazia. By discussing formalising Nagorno- Karabakh as an independent state, Armenia is stirring things up.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)