OCT. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – International ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said it will stop including the Kashagan oil field in its economic forecasts for Kazakhstan because of continuous delays in production.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hualing Georgia, a private Chinese holding, opened its first luxury hotel in Tbilisi Sea New City, a new urban development on the shores of an artificial lake near Georgia’s capital city. Hualing has invested $150m in Tbilisi Sea New City, including $73m in the hotel. China been investing heavily in the S.Caucasus.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian telecoms company VimpelCom said it is selling 50,000 phone towers across the former Soviet Union for $5b. VimpelCom, headquartered in the Netherlands, hired several banks to broker the deal. Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are among the countries involved in the deal.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — When OPEC calls, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are unlikely to answer.
OPEC, an organisation for oil exporting countries, is seeking to coordinate a cut in production with non-OPEC countries to lift oil prices.
Acting as a cartel, OPEC can determine production levels in order to control global oil prices. It has done so repeatedly over the past decades.
Strapped for cash and reliant on oil exports, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are not OPEC members and do not enjoy the same market power as Saudi Arabia or Russia.
Because their action would have little effect on oil prices they are unlikely to play OPEC’s game, according to Daniel Yergin, vice- chairman of the IHS consulting company and one of the most authoritative voices on Caspian energy issues.
“I think they will not cooperate. They (Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan) are typical non-OPEC countries who simply produce at a maximum they can,” Mr Yergin told Reuters.
Lower oil prices and ageing fields have pushed production numbers down in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan (minus 2% and 3% respectively) and they simply cannot afford to arbitrarily cut back production in concert with OPEC.
The economies of these two Caspian countries are heavily reliant on hard currency revenues from oil exports. They’ll want to keep oil production at a maximum.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
TBILISI, OCT. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Construction work on two twisting skyscrapers that will dominate the Tbilisi skyline restarted after a seven year lull, a symbolic act of confidence in Georgia’s economic revival since a 2008 war with Russia.
At 41-storeys , the Axis Towers will become Tbilisi’s tallest – and one of its most iconic – buildings when they are completed in 2017.
Opening the start of construction for the towers, Georgia’s President Irakli Garibashvili said the project will help boost the tourism industry in Georgia.
“The Axis Towers is a completely Georgian project,” Garibashvili added.
One of the two towers will be a five-star hotel operated by the French company Pullman, and the other tower will host residential apartments. The British company Arup would be involved in building the towers.
In February, the Georgian government and the Axis property company agreed to re-start the $83m project that was derailed by economic stagnation in Georgia after the 2008 war.
The project is funded through a joint venture between Axis and the state-owned Georgian Co-Investment Fund.
“About 1,000 people will be employed in the Axis Towers in the (construction) stage,” Mr Garibashvili according to comments on his website.
“Once it’s built several hundred people will have steady employment here.”
Georgia is witnessing a surge in prestige building projects, including the Tbilisi Sea New City development and various projects planned for the Black Sea resort of Batumi.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Meyrbek Moldabekov, deputy head of Kazakhstan’s space agency KazCosmos, said it has entered a joint venture with French aircraft manufacturer Airbus to build satellites. Airbus owns 27.5% of the venture and will be jointly responsible for operations at an assembly plant to be built in Kazakhstan by 2017.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps with potential gas supplies to Europe in mind, Turkmenistan opened a shop in Tbilisi selling various national produce. Turkmenistan is exploring the potential of supplying the EU with gas. Georgia hosts a gas pipeline running west from the Caspian Sea.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia is in talks with Russia’s Gazprom to import gas, Georgian energy minister Kakha Kaladze told media, highlighting the improved relations between the two neighbours. Georgia currently exports nearly all its gas from Azerbaijan although it hosts a pipeline pumping gas from Russia to Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Astana where he signed a deal with Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to jointly explore and develop the north Caspian Sea for hydrocarbon reserves.
The deal, signed before a meeting of leaders from the former Soviet Union, came roughly a week after Kazakhstan also hosted Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. He signed deals with Mr Nazarbayev to increase cooperation in energy and aerospace. The timings of the two leaders’ visits to Astana highlights just how pressured the diplomatic space that Kazakhstan has to operate in is. It needs to keep relations with both Ukraine and Russia, who are locked in a proxy war in eastern Ukraine, sweet.
“We have big plans on joint oil production in the Caspian Sea,” Mr Putin said after signing the deal.
Kazakhstan and Russia also signed a deal for the Russian military to test missiles that would spread debris over a patch of Kazakhstan.
A week earlier, Mr Poroshenko had been in town talking up ties with Kazakhstan. This week, Kazakhstan’s ministry of defence said that it had signed a deal with Ukraine to boost cooperation in aviation.
Mr Nazarbayev has previously touted Kazakhstan as the ideal place for trying to thrash out a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. There has been no formal move to hand this role to Kazakhstan but but leaders do apparently appear relaxed about flying to Astana in quick succession.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — KazTransGas, Kazakhstan’s state owned gas distributor, warned Georgia it might take their dispute over its subsidiary to international arbitration if Georgia failed to restart negotiations. KazTransGas is looking for compensation for the $130m it spent on its subsidiary KazTransGas-Tbilisi in 2006-09 before the Georgian government took control of the company.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
