Tag Archives: hydrocarbons

Georgia and Russia still talk gas

JAN. 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Gazprom and the Georgian government are still in talks over supplying more gas to Georgia, media reported quoting energy minister Kakha Kaladze. Georgia wants to increase gas supplies from Russia, a sensitive issue as the two countries had been enemies until recently. Georgia has risked irritating its neighbour and main gas supplier Azerbaijan by holding negotiations to buy more gas from Russia and Iran.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Markets: Tethys spotlight

JAN. 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Guernsey-based oil and gas company Tethys Petroleum continues to travel along the bumpy roads of Central Asia. After a lengthy tug-of-war with Nostrum Petroleum over a takeover offer, it finally agreed with a $35m deal with Olisol, an oil investment group in Kazakhstan.

The funds, however, have not yet reached Tethys and at the end of December, the company said it “does not have sufficient funding to meet its requirements beyond next few months.”

In its operation at Tajikistan’s Bokhtar field, Tethys has lost the confidence of Total and CNPC, its partners in the project, after failing to pay its share for two consecutive cash calls.

What Tethys now doesn’t need is a fight with the Tajik government over the Bokhtar licence. The Tajik side says it’s been seven years since the beginning of the exploration and it is now entitled by law to strip 25% of the licensed area from the consortium.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Azerbaijan’s President puts on a brave face

JAN. 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Apparently putting a brave face on an increasingly poor economic outlook, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said at a government meeting that the country’s GDP had actually grown last year by one percentage point. He also said that Azerbaijan needed to reduce its dependency on oil, something that most analysts have been urging for some time.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

China gas payments fall for Turkmenistan

DEC. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – China pays considerably less for the gas it bought from Turkmenistan between Jan. and Nov. 2015, compared to the same period in 2014, Chinese media reporting quoting official stats. China increased supplies from Turkmenistan by 13.8% during this period but still only paid $22.3b, 15% less than the total bill during the same period in 2014. Turkmenistan is largely reliant on China for its revenues although it is developing a gas route to India.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Azerbaijan finds two bodies in the Caspian Sea

JAN. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s emergency ministry confirmed that it had recovered two bodies from the Turkmen sector of the Caspian Sea thought to be those of workers washed overboard during a storm and fire on an oil rig in December. 33 workers died in the fire, the worst offshore oil rig platform disaster since the North Sea Piper Alpha fire in 1988.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

GAIL wants 5% of Turkmen pipeline project TAPI

DEC. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Indian gas distributor GAIL said it wants to buy a 5% stake in the TAPI pipeline project, two weeks after construction started on the 1,700km pipeline that will run from Turkmenistan to India. TAPI will pump 33b cubic metres of Turkmen gas to India per year, via Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is expected to come online in 2019. Turkmenistan’s state-owned Turkmengaz is the operator of the project.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Service companies sign deals with Azerbaijan

DEC. 22-29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Norway’s Agility, Britain’s KCA Deutag and British-Azerbaijani joint venture SOCAR-Cape all signed contracts with BP and Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR to provide services to off- shore energy projects in the Caspian Sea. These separate deals show Azerbaijan’s reliance on Western technology to operate and service its oil and gas projects.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Russia cuts Turkmenistan gas imports in 2016

JAN. 4 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Amid low energy prices and economic strains, Russia’s state- owned Gazprom is reshaping its gas relations with countries in the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

It is effectively buying gas from Central Asia to sell on to Europe, China and, partly, to the South Caucasus.

Gazprom confirmed it will stop gas imports from Turkmenistan and, at the same time increase purchases from neighbouring Uzbekistan to 3.1b cubic metres.

“The basis for this decision is the changed situation on the international gas market, as well as certain economic and financial issues arising from the Gazprom’s exports,” it said in a statement.

Gazprom didn’t release price details with either Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan but its statement did confirm shifting alliances in Central Asia. Previously, Russia had imported heavily from Turkmenistan. This flow, though, has fallen as relations between the two countries grew increasingly strained. Turkmenistan wants to supply Europe with gas, via Azerbaijan and Turkey, putting it in direct competition with Russia.

Last year, Turkmenistan effectively signalled that Russia had stopped paying for its gas.

But Gazprom needs to buy Central Asian gas to honour its deals with China and Europe, as well as making new deals in the South Caucasus.

Gazprom already supplies Armenia with gas and is negotiating export deals with Georgia and Azerbaijan who both need to meet domestic power consumption.

Rovnag Abdullayev, president of Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR, met with Alexei Miller, Gazprom’s CEO, in December to discuss 2016 volumes.

“The possibility of increasing [Russian gas] supplies taking into account the prospects for growth in natural gas consumption in the country was considered,” SOCAR said in a statement.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Editorial: Turkmenistan’s pipeline

JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan completed its $2.5b East-West Pipeline, a project with a stated objective of making gas available for export.

The pipeline can transport around 30b cubic metres of gas to the Turkmen Caspian shore and it could then potentially be linked to a Trans- Caspian Pipeline which connects to another pipeline system to Europe.

But, and this is the catch, there is no plan to build a pipeline across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan from Turkmenistan. It’s a big catch and must be causing policymakers in Turkmenistan to lose sleep.

There is neither an agreement nor funding ready for a trans-Caspian link and bringing gas to the western part of Turkmenistan doesn’t necessarily mean it will continue to Europe.

The Turkmen government hailed the East-West Pipeline as a step towards Europe, but it could be Turkmenistan’s White Elephant. The East- West Pipeline was planned and commissioned during the height of the hype of building a trans-Caspian pipeline. With low oil and gas prices, the world is a very different place today.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Azerbaijani businessman denies accusations

DEC. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Malta-based Oil Transportation and Shipping Services, owned by Azerbaijani businessman Mubariz Mansimov, denied any allegation of its association with the BMZ Group, owned by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son. Russia accused the BMZ Group of smuggling oil on behalf of the Islamic State. Relations between Russia and Turkey have broken down after a Turkish fighter-jet shot down a Russian fighter-jet over Syria in November.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)