NOV. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan Airlines said that it had suspended flights between Baku and both Gabala and Ganja because they were unprofitable. The company said that there simply had not been enough passengers on the flights for them to be profitable.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a potentially important move for regional trade links, Azerbaijan invited Iran to use its transport hub in the Kazakh port city of Aktau as a launch-pad to send its products across Central Asia. Iran is looking to bolster trade links across the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Rauf Mirkadyrov, a high-profile journalist in Azerbaijan has gone on trial for high treason. He was extradited in April 2014 to Azerbaijan from Turkey. The West has been highly critical of Azerbaijan’s crackdown on media.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company said it had opened a subsidiary company, called Caspian Marine Service, in Russia’s Astrakhan to take advantage of the area’s economic free zone. Trade around the Caspian Sea has generally increased over the past few years. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have all increased their ports’ capacities.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The head of the US Navy, Ray Mabus, met with Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev in Baku. No details of the meeting were released but the Caspian Sea has grown in importance over the past few years with the re-emergence of Iran and an increase of oil and gas supplies from Central Asia to the South Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)
NOV. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev flew to Tbilisi for a meeting with Georgia’s President Giorgi Margvelashvili. Officially, the clearly good-natured meeting only yielded promises of a deeper relationship but energy links were likely to have been discussed. Georgia is an important transit country for Azerbaijani gas en route to Turkey and Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)
NOV. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP said it expects to maintain last year’s production levels at Azeri Chirag-Guneshli (ACG), the largest oil field complex in Azerbaijan, despite analysts’ predictions that output would fall.
BP, which owns a 35.8% stake in ACG, has been under pressure to ensure that Azerbaijan’s most important oil project doesn’t reduce its output any further.
“We expect that the production on the results of 2015 at the block will not be lower than last year. Current production figures are ahead of the forecasted ones,” Gordon Birrell, BP regional director, told reporters .
Analysts had predicted a drop of 3% in Azerbaijan’s country-wide oil output in 2015 compared to 2014.
In H1 2015, production at ACG declined by 2.3% to 641,000 barrels/day compared to the same period in 2014.
This means that the third quarter report, due in the next few weeks, will have to show an increase in production to cancel out the Q1 drop.
Maintenance work halted operations at West Azeri in May and at Chirag in September. BP said it would carry out further work at Chirag on Nov. 10 for 25 days.
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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)
NOV. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR said its joint venture with Dutch oil and gas services company Fugro will work on the modernisation of a refinery near Baku. SOCAR Fugro will provide geophysical and geotechnical services for the modernisation work. Azerbaijan has earmarked around $1b for reconstruction work on the country’s largest refinery.
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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)
NOV. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Baku released jailed human rights activist Arif Yunus from prison because of his failing health. Yunus will have to serve the rest of his sentence for various financial crimes under house arrest. He was sent to prison with his wife Leyla in August for 7 years. Leyla received a prison sentence of 8-1⁄2 years. Human rights campaigners have said they are political prisoners.
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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)
NOV. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev fired his long-serving communications minister Ali Abbasov, the second sacking of a government minister in two months.
Mr Aliyev has generally preferred to keep people in key positions for years, so the sackings have created an unusual sense of instability around the Azerbaijani government.
Mr Abbasov had been communications minister for over 11 years.
The presidential press service announced the sacking through an online statement. No reason was given for the sacking although shortly afterwards police arrested 10 senior officials in the communications ministry and charged them with corruption.
The pattern is similar to the sacking last month of national security minister Eldar Mahmudov. He had also been in the job since 2004. Similarly, after Mr Mahmudov was sacked, police arrested several senior officials in the national security ministry for corruption.
Azerbaijan is routinely criticised for its corruption levels but it is unusual for the state to purge its own ranks for alleged graft and even more unusual for an internal investigation to trigger ministerial sackings.
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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)
