Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

EU wants improved ties with Azerbaijan

FEB. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Baku, Federica Mogherini, a European Commission vice-president in charge of external affairs, said the European Union and Azerbaijan need to work hard to improve relations which have soured over the past few years.

Ms Mogherini made the comments during a two-day trip to Baku and to Armenia’s capital Yerevan.

“It is time for a new chapter in the relations between the EU and Azerbaijan. We need an all-round strategic partnership between us,” she said during a speech to the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council.

“We have not always seen eye to eye in all matters, and we know that differences will remain between us in some areas. This is normal in international relations and often in European and even national politics.”

Europe has been vocal over what it has said is a systematic crackdown by the Azerbaijani authorities against civil society and the media. The Azerbaijani government has responded by accusing Europe and the United States of meddling in affairs which aren’t theirs and of trying to stir a revolution.

The result has been a drift by Azerbaijan towards Russia.

Still, Europe and Azerbaijan have been working together on a pipeline network running from the Caspian Sea to central Europe.

Europe wants to reduce its reliance on Russia for gas and its sees Azerbaijan as the solution. The pipeline network is dubbed the Southern Gas Corridor.

Ms Mogherini was careful to avoid direct mention of human rights and media freedom in her speech but the underlying message would have been clear and her speech was an important step towards, tentatively, mending Azerbaijan-EU relations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Azerbaijan drops currency tax

FEB. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Azerbaijani parliament formally dropped a plan to impose a 20% tax on all deals in foreign currencies. It voted to drop the bill, which had passed earlier in the year, after President Ilham Aliyev refused to sign it. The motive for the bill had been to protect Azerbaijan’s manat currency which has lost around half its value but critics said it was unfair and unworkable. Low oil prices have hit Azerbaijan hard. It is reliant on oil to earn export revenue.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Pegasus expoands to Azerbaijan

FEB. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkish airline Pegasus said it will launch its new Istanbul-Gabala route to Azerbaijan on March 18. Pegasus will fly to the town of Gabala, in central Azerbaijan, three times a week.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Russia accuses Azerbaijan of aiding Turkey

FEB. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s agricultural watchdog accused Azerbaijan of re-exporting potatoes from Turkey to Russia to help their Turkish allies beat Russian sanctions.

This is the first time that Russia has accused a country from Central Asia and the South Caucasus, which have loyalties to both the Kremlin and Ankara, of helping Turkey dodge sanctions imposed last year after a Turkish fighter-jet shot down a Russian fighter-jet over Syria.

“After inspecting the food shipments coming from Azerbaijan and Iran to ensure their commitment to Russia’s decision to prevent the import of agricultural products from Turkey, we have noted that Azerbaijan has doubled its potato shipments to our country by five times since last January,” Sergei Dankvet, head of the agricultural watchdog, told media.

He also said Russia had complained to Azerbaijan and warned it of potential consequences. Companies in the Baltics have previously used Central Asia to skip EU sanctions to send their dairy goods to Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Jan. 26 2016)

Editorial: Azerbaijan and potatoes

FEB. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan,it could be said, is caught between a rock and a hard place.

Two of its allies are at loggerheads and now Russia has accused it of trying to help shift potatoes around sanctions it imposed on Turkey after a Turkish warplane shot down a Russian warplane over Syria.

Azerbaijani businesses are having a tough time. The economic downturn has been tough on them and the prospect of earning a percentage may have been too much for them to ignore. Of course, they may also have just wanted to help out their regional Big Brother, Turkey.

Whatever the reason, the accusation from Moscow has thrown a spotlight on Central Asia and the South Caucasus over their sanction-beating roles.

Last year, Baltic suppliers sent dairy products to Uzbekistan for re-export to Kazakhstan and then to Russia, circumventing Western sanctions against Russia. This year Aktau port said shipments from Turkey had increased by 10-times, although they didn’t say goods were being sent on to Russia.

The region, it appears, has become a transit hub for Russia-bound goods.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Armenia receives arms loan

FEB. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia has agreed to give Armenia a $200m loan to buy weapons from Russian arms manufacturers, media reported. Under the terms of the deal, Armenia will use the loan to pay for Smerch rocket launchers, Igla-S air-defense systems, radar-jamming systems, sniper rifles, and armoured vehicles. Armenia will pay for 10% of the weapons, while Russia’s credit would cover the rest. Armenia is still at war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The day after the deal was signed, Azerbaijan said that it had made a formal complaint to Russia that its arms deal with Armenia would upset the delicate military equilibrium in the region.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Azerbaijan’s President pays visit to Tehran

FEB. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev flew to Tehran for talks with his Iranian counterparts. Media reported that the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding on oil and gas projects.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Azerbaijan cancels $16.5b petrochemical project

FEB. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR said it had halted a multi-billion dollar project to develop the OGPC petrochemical complex at Sangachal, 40km south of Baku, because of sustained low oil prices, dealing a major blow to the country’s economic outlook.

SOCAR’s vice president Tofig Gahramanov said the company had stopped construction on the complex that was once valued at $16.5b and feted as the project that would transform Azerbaijan into the region’s biggest producer of refined products.

“We can say that active work on the OGPC project has been temporarily frozen,” Mr Gahramanov told Reuters in an interview.

Last month, in Kazakhstan, South Korea’s LG Chem cancelled a $4.2b project to build a petrochemical plant on the Caspian Sea coast.

Initially, the OGPC project near Baku, included an oil refinery which was later dropped, bringing the cost of construction down to $7b.

Japan’s Mitsui signed a preliminary memorandum to take part in the project last year. Last year, the Britain-based unit of US’ Fluor Group was selected as the lead contractor on the project. Fluor UK declined to comment when contacted by The Conway Bulletin.

The economic downturn has hit Azerbaijan hard. The manat currency has lost around 50% of its value and, with oil prices still low, the project was simply too costly for the state budget.

And the impact of SOCAR’s decision to freeze, or scrap, plans to build the petrochemical complex will be felt far and wide.

This was one of the biggest projects in the region and dozens of Western companies will have been lined up to work on it.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Armenia changes position over N-K

FEB. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia plans to change its military doctrine around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh from a static defence philosophy to a more active philosophy, Radio Free Europe reported quoting a deputy Armenian defence minister at an OSCE meeting in Vienna. It didn’t give any more details on what this change of philosophy may mean although it could aggravate an already tense stand-off with Azerbaijan around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Azerbaijan and Russia resume oil flow

FEB. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan and Russia agreed to resume shipments of oil through the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline on March 1. The agreement ends weeks of negotiations over the restart of oil supplies. Oil flows along the the pipeline give a decent insight into the state of Azerbaijani- Russian relations. Over the past few years, oil flows have been a stop start affair but now appear to have steadied, much like bilateral relations, at around 1.4m tonnes per year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)