DEC. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan will halt all its oil exports via Russia in February, an official for the Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR told Reuters. Azerbaijani-Russian relations have become increasingly strained and over the past few years Azerbaijan has shift most of its oil exports to Europe via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
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(News report from Issue No. 164, published on Dec. 11 2013)
DEC. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkey will take a larger stake in the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) running from the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea to Europe, said Rovnag Abdullayev, head of Azerbaijan’s state energy company SOCAR. Statoil and Total will be offered smaller stakes to accommodate Turkey’s ambitions.
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(News report from Issue No. 164, published on Dec. 11 2013)
DEC. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Greek parliament ratified a deal to build the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) which will connect Turkey with Italy and send Azerbaijani gas to the EU. The Greek parliament’s ratification is important as it keeps TAP on track for a construction start in 2015.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
NOV. 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Uzbek government fired the head of its gas pipeline monopoly Uztransgaz, Tulyagan Jurayev, less than a month after the head of Uzbekneftegas, the state energy company, was also sacked. It’s unclear why Mr Jurayev was sacked. Analysts said it may be part of a power struggle in Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 161, published on Nov. 20 2013)
NOV. 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia and Kazakhstan signed a preliminary deal to pump Russian oil through Kazakh pipelines to China. Russia’s pipeline network is full while Kazakhstan has spare capacity.
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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)
SEPT. 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rounding off a tour of Central Asia, Chinese president Xi Jinping signed a deal with his Tajik counterpart, Emomali Rakhmon, to build a 400km gas pipeline crossing Tajikistan to China from Turkmenistan. The deal, announced on the side lines of a regional summit in Bishkek, is a major boost for Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 152, published on Sept. 18 2013)
SEPT. 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Britain’s Rolls Royce has won a $175m contract to build compressor units to pump gas along a 1,115km pipeline from Kazakhstan to China, media reported quoting Beimbet Shayakhmetov, general director of the Asia Gas Pipeline. The pipeline is one of several being built in Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 152, published on Sept. 18 2013)
SEPT. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) –Just as first oil from the giant Kashagan field in Kazakhstan’s sector of the Caspian Sea draws tantalisingly close, a partner in one of its main export routes has warned of a delay to planned capacity expansion.
In an interview with Reuters, Mikhail Barkov, vice-president at Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft, said work to expand the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) pipeline that runs from Atyrau in west Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiik had been delayed by 6-12 months.
He didn’t give any reason for the delay.
Transneft is the largest shareholder in CPC, followed by Kazmunaigas and US oil major Chevron. There are several other smaller shareholders. The pipeline started operations in 2001 and has been an important export route for Kazakh oil, mainly from the Chevron-led Tengizchevroil project.
The plan had been to roughly double the capacity of CPC to about 1.3m barrels of oil a day by 2015, partly to cope with extra supplies from the Kashagan oil field.
News of the CPC delay is likely to frustrate Kazakh oil exporters, particularly as they were set to soon celebrate the first oil from Kashagan after years of delays and cost overruns.
On Sept. 7, Sauat Mynbayev, head of Kazmunaigas, said that Kashagan would start production within a month.
An expanded CPC has been touted as one of the primary export routes for oil from Kashagan. The expansion delay is likely to push oil from Kashagan — operated by a consortium of ENI, ExxonMobil, Total, Kazmunaigas, Shell, Inpex and now China’s CNPC — onto other export routes wholly owned by Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
AUG. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR wants to buy 5m tonnes of oil from Russia’s Rosneft, media quoted SOCAR chairman Rovnag Abdullayev as saying. The plan is to reverse the flow of the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline to pump the oil to Azerbaijan where it will either be refined or exported to Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 149, published on Aug. 26 2013)
AUG. 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Relations between Azerbaijan and Russia have generally been cool for the past decade or so. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Baku on Aug. 13 only served to underline this.
Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, has looked to balance the interests of the country’s former master, Russia, with that of Europe, a major energy client. In previous years there has been talk of Russia buying up Azerbaijan’s gas supplies but this never materialised. Instead, Western energy firms have tightened their hold on Azerbaijan’s vast Caspian Sea energy supplies by buying up stakes in fields and building pipelines.
And despite rhetoric of improved ties between Moscow and Baku before a trip by Mr Putin, his first to the Azerbaijani capital in seven years, this general trajectory appears set.
Russia’s Rosneft had talked of an energy deal with SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state-owned energy company, but this never materialised. Sources told media outlets that a vague agreement had been signed but there were too many differences to commit to anything more meaningful.
These differences are varied. Some are personal, others strategic — last year Russia and Azerbaijan failed to agree on a lease extension for a Russian radar base — and others are commercial. Azerbaijan-Russia relations still need some mending.
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(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)
