Tag Archives: business

ADB says that Turkmenistan’s TAPI pipeline is ‘doable’

APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it will support infrastructure projects in Turkmenistan, including the $10b TAPI gas pipeline and also rail and electricity links to neighbouring countries.

Over the next two years, the ADB plans to invest around $1b on construction of railway corridors and the production and supply of electricity.

On TAPI, the pipeline that should, if all goes to plan, pump Turkmen gas to India through Afghanistan and Pakistan by 2019, the ADB delivered a determined, positive endorsement.

“We’re going through some of the toughest territory in Afghanistan, so the challenge is there. There’s no doubt about it,” Sean O’Sullivan, director for Central Asia at the ADB, told Reuters the day after a $200m investment deal was signed for TAPI between its key shareholders — Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

“But I am sure it’s doable.”

The ADB has been a staunch defender of the TAPI pipeline, which many analysts have said is too complicated to pull off successfully, and advised the partners on the financing of the $10b project.

Previously, the ADB pulled funding from the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan railway link, because of security concerns. Now, by saying that TAPI is “doable”, Mr O’Sullivan is effectively giving the ADB’s endorsement to the project, despite ongoing doubts on security guarantees.

In the meantime, construction work continued on TAPI, with Turkmen officials triumphantly announced that they had finished welding the first kilometre of the pipeline.

The other countries have reportedly started construction work too.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Kazakh oil production to drop

APRIL 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – OPEC, a club of oil exporting countries, and the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Kazakhstan’s oil output will decline this year. OPEC said Kazakh production will slow by 3.2% to 1.55m barrels/day. The EIA, which uses different parameters in its calculations, said it would fall 1.2% to 1.71m barrels/day.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Georgia charges transit fee

APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – After months of negotiations, Georgia and Russia’s Gazprom retained a deal that will give Georgia 10% of Gazprom’s gas throughput to Armenia. The deal was heralded by the Georgian side as a victory. They said that Gazprom had wanted Georgia to charge it a transit fee for hosting a pipeline to Armenia and then pay for its own gas.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

ENA to upgrade Armenian power distribution system

APRIL 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA), the Armenian national grid, said it would invest 20b drams ($42m) into modernising the country’s power distribution system. The largest proportion of this cash will be spent on updating the metering system. Russia-based, but Armenian-owned, Tashir Group bought ENA last year from Russia’s Inter RAO. Electricity is a sensitive topic in Armenia. Last year, when ENA tried to increase prices, streets protests forced it to back down.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Armenia receives gas discount

APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A week after agreeing to a price cut for its gas exports to Kyrgyzstan, Russian state-owned Gazprom said it would give Armenia a similar discount for this year’s supplies.

Gazprom’s CEO Alexei Miller and Anatoly Yanovsky, Armenia’s deputy energy minister, signed the agreement after Russian PM Dmitri Medvedev visited Yerevan and discussed the price cut with President Serzh Sargsyan.

Gazprom agreed to give a 9% discount for the gas it pumps to Armenia, the same percentage discount as Kyrgyzstan, lowering the price to $150 per 1,000 cubic metres.

The long-awaited discount, importantly, fell short of Armenian officials’ expectations, having seen Gazprom’s prices to Europe fall by an average of 40% in the past 18 months.

“Any decline in prices is positive, but in this case, a $15 drop cannot be considered a serious help to reducing the prime cost of Armenian goods,” Artsvik Minasyan, minister of economy, said.

Armenian officials had said they hoped to get a 12% discount.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Kazakh coal production shrinks

APRIL 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Coal production in Kazakhstan could shrink by as much as 20% by 2040, Bolat Akchulakov, president of Kazenergy, an industry lobby group, said. Kazakhstan relies on coal for 66% of its energy consumption. A number of coal fired power plants are currently being phased out both in Kazakhstan and in Russia, the main destination of Kazakhstan’s coal exports.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Copper production increases in Kazakh mine

APRIL 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan-focused miner Central Asia Metals said copper production at its Kounrad project stood at 3,207 tonnes in the first quarter of the year. This is a 36.5% increase compared to the same period last year. The company said this increase was due to the completion of the first expansion of the SX-EW plant last spring.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Azerbaijani SOCAR to borrow from IBA

APRIL 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR will receive a loan of around $260m from the International Bank of Azerbaijan this year for the modernisation of the Heydar Aliyev oil refinery near Baku, Suleyman Gasimov, SOCAR’s vice president told local media. Last October, SOCAR and IBA agreed to a $1.6b loan that IBA would extend in several periodical tranches.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Aeroflot launches flights to Uzbek capital

APRIL 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian flagship carrier Aeroflot said it is introducing an eight weekly link to Tashkent, a modification of its earlier summer schedule. The new flights will start on June 2, every Thursday from Moscow Sheremetyevo.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Kazakh President’s nephew invests in cars

APRIL 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Automotive holding Allur Auto and Alatau Invest Capital agreed to form a partnership to expand the Kostanai car assembly plant and to create a national brand for Kazakh cars. Alatau is a new financial group owned by the eldest nephew of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kairat Satybaldy. Earlier in February, the company signed an agreement with Kaspi Bank and Baring Vostok to invest in the IT and financial sectors.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)