Tag Archives: business

Exports drop at Azerbaijan’s SOCAR

JULY 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its monthly report, SOCAR said it cut its oil export by 10% in the first half of 2016, compared to last year. The company did not give a reason for the drop. Shipments via Turkey’s Ceyhan port, the terminal of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, were 30% lower in June 2016 compared to last year. Shipments via the Supsa terminal in Georgia fell by 48% in the same month.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

Business comment: Contracts of the century

JULY 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After the fall of the Soviet Union, multinational oil companies flocked into Central Asia and the South Caucasus to strike new deals around the Caspian Sea.

Kazakhstan in 1993 and Azerbaijan in 1994 awarded two massive licenses to Chevron and BP respectively. Both contracts became known as “the contract of the century”.

They became the largest oil projects in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, both operated under Production Sharing Agreement schemes, which gave significant advantages to the multinational companies in recovering their initial capital expenditures.

In the new era of sustained low oil prices, however, the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) group of offshore oil fields in Azerbaijan has had a different fate from Tengizchevroil in west Kazakhstan.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly pushed BP and its partners to increase production and continue to invest in spite of lower returns. Since mid-2014, when oil prices started plunging, ACG’s output growth has been sluggish at best. Now a potential corporate war over ACG between BP and Exxon contrasts strikingly to the success story of Tengizchevroil.

After years of mulling over an expansion and balancing costs, the consortium decided to launch a $36.8b investment that will boost production by 2022. This is a relief for Kazakhstan.

Tengiz has one of the lowest production costs in the region, at around $5.3/barrel, which makes it an easy bet even when oil prices are so low.

After the hype of the 1990s, now it seems clearer which of the two really deserved to be called the “contract of the century”.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

China wants to build bank in Georgia

JULY 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Chinese holding company Hualing wants to build the third largest bank in Georgia by merging Basisbank, of which it owns 90%, and Bank Republic, which it is looking to buy. France’s Societe Generale owns a 93.6% stake in Bank Republic and the EBRD owns the rest. If the agreement with Hualing goes through, Societe Generale will own an 8% stake in the merged bank and the EBRD will own a 3.9%. In recent months,Hualing has also heavily invested in Georgia’s construction sector.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

TCO approves $36.8b project for Tengiz oil field in Kazakhstan

JULY 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tengizchevroil (TCO), a Chevron- led consortium, approved a $36.8b expansion project for the Tengiz oil field in west Kazakhstan. The consortium said the expansion will boost production by 45% to around 39m tonnes/year by 2022. Tengiz is Kazakhstan’s most profitable oil field.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

Kazakhstan’s Tengizchevroil approves $37 billion expansion plan

ALMATY, JULY 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After prevaricating for three years, Tengizchevroil (TCO), a Chevron-led consortium, approved the $36.8b expansion of the Tengiz oil field in west Kazakhstan.

Low oil prices had thrown the Tengiz expansion plans into doubt, so the decision will be a huge relief to the Kazakh government which has been looking for ways to stimulate output to beat slowing GDP growth.

The so-called Future Growth Project will boost production at TCO by 45% to 39m tonnes/year by 2022.

Government officials and company representatives lauded the deal, the largest private investment in the world’s oil industry for a decade.

“This decision made by major international companies re-affirms that the Republic of Kazakhstan is a country with favourable business climate where long-term investments can be made with confidence,” the Kazakh minister of energy Kanat Bozumbayev said in a press release.

Through its state-owned energy company Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan owns 20% of TCO. The other shareholders are Chevron (50%), Exxon (25%) and Lukoil’s subsidiary LukArco (5%).

The development of the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau has been one of the West’s success stories in the former Soviet Union. It is Kazakhstan’s largest oil producer, pumping out a third of its total output, and exports via the CPC pipeline that sweeps through Russia, north of the Caspian Sea to Novorossiysk on the Black Sea.

This compares to the Kashagan oil project in the Caspian Sea which is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

Analysts said that TCO had decided that oil prices were steadily moving back up and that low steel prices and cheap labour made the timing right for expansion.

The consortium said the expansion will generate as many as 20,000 jobs during the peak construction phase.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

Georgians protest against hydro

JULY 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Residents of Chuberi, a small village in Georgia’s north-western province of Svaneti, held rallies against the construction of the Nenskra hydropower plant, saying that it would negatively impact their livelihood. Activists said that the power plant will sit in a dangerously seismic region and its construction on the Svaneti river could trigger landslides. The Nenskra plant will cost $1b to build and will be the second largest hydropower plant in the country when it is completed in 2019.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

SFO to look into Kazakh ENRC

JULY 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The British government gave the Serious Frauds Office extra funding to complete its ongoing corruption investigation into ENRC, a Kazakh miner that quit the London Stock Exchange in 2013. The company is accused of having paid bribes to win contracts in Kazakhstan and Africa. Three prominent Kazakhstan-based businessmen, Alexander Mashkevich, Alijan Ibragimov and Patokh Chodiev, founded ENRC, now called Eurasian Resources Group.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

Stock market: Central Asia Metals

JULY 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Central Asia Metals, a Kazakhstan-focused copper producer, jumped 5% on Monday after it announced that its Q2 production had increased by 20%, boosting investor confidence. It closed at 156p/share on Thursday.

The company can now boast a 27% growth in production and a 24% increase in sales for H1 2016, compared to the same period last year. Central Asia Metals is expanding its Kounrad project, a copper recovery plant, which should be expanded in H2 2016.

The past six months or so have been a rollercoaster for Central Asia Metals’ share price. It plunged to an 18-month low in January before rebounding back to above 160p/share in March. After a brief period of stability, though, the stock suffered the downward pressure of declining copper prices and spiraled down to around 145p/share.

Analysts said the nature of Central Asia Metals’ production makes it immune from copper price volatility, but, as shown in the graph, both the stock and the commodity have gained 10% since the beginning of the year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

EIB plans loan to Azerbaijan’s AccessBank

JULY 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The EU’s European Investment Bank (EIB) said it plans to issue a €20m ($22m) loan to Azerbaijan’s AccessBank. Banks in Azerbaijan have suffered cash shortages this year, after the Central Bank abandoned the currency peg to the US dollar, slashing the value of the manat. AccessBank mainly funds small and medium enterprises. The EIB had issued a €25m ($27m) loan in 2014.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

Armenia’s power production drops

JULY 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s Statistics Committee said that electricity production shrank by 1.9% in Jan.-May 2016 compared to the same period last year. Overall, the Metsamor nuclear power plant produced more than a third of Armenia’s 3.2b kWh output. Importantly, hydropower stations surpassed thermal power plants in their share of total electricity output for the first time.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)