Comments on: Denials Abound (updated)

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 08:41:17 +0000

Shrugging my shoulders is about the best I can do on the matter. Though I have followed this question for some time, as a friend of mine was involved in a lawsuit with ETG (a company I briefly worked upstairs from at one point. They are in the same building in Moscow as Raiffeisen, intriguingly…), I am still at a loss to understand the minutiae of a lot of the goings-on.
However, you did bring up some interesting questions that I may bring up with a Ukranian pal of mine who is positively obsessive on the subject. Watch this space… or another space.

By: Anodyne

Anodyne — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 19:40:56 +0000

Speak of the devil. Looks like Ms.Tymoshenko will have to live off of unemployment for a while.

By: Anodyne

Anodyne — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:49:54 +0000

I just can’t keep up with these ratbastards anymore. So RosUkrEnergoprom is a joint venture between Gazprom and Raiffeisen Bank. Do Turkmenistan and Ukraine have separate delivery agreements with them? Is there an alternative transportation avenue? If not, is TB relying on Ukraine’s pull to keep Gozprom from interfering in their deal? Or is this TB’s way of extracting rents from Russia in the form of lower prices or pre-financing in any new pipeline agreements? Feel free to shrug your shoulders on this one.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:23:37 +0000

Anodyne,

As far I know EuralTransGas disappeared in a haze of murky allegations over possible associations with organized crime. The company currently in charge of gas trasportation from Turkmenistan to Ukraine, via Russia, is RosUkrEnergoprom. Implicit in the fact that all deliveries need to pass through Russia may not be a stumbling in the legal sense, but there is every reason it could be a stumbling block later. To give one example, Russia could easily block or confiscate any deliveries as a tit-for-tat retaliation for Ukranian misappropriation of gas. There was an item about this in a Russian paper I read a few weeks back.
The subject is, however, all in flux, as this recent report (15 August) in Ukranian, translated by BBC Monitoring, suggests;

“This year’s first round of Ukrainian-Russian talks on gas supplies, which was to begin today in Moscow, has been postponed.

The Ukrainian delegation, headed by Energy Minister Ivan Plachkov and Justice Minister Roman Zvarych, was to resolve the gas conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Specifically, the talks were to focus on the pricing policy of Gazprom, which stated its intent to raise the gas price three-fold and to switch to cash payments for transit of Russian gas through Ukraine. Other unsolved questions include the conditions for transit of Turkmen gas by Russia, volumes of gas supplies to Ukraine in 2006 and the use of Ukrainian storage facilities for Russian gas.”

By: Anodyne

Anodyne — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 15:03:11 +0000

Peter,

“Gazprom, which has already signed an agreement with Turkmenistan for the purchase of the same volume of gas beginning in 2007, said that the new agreement with Naftogaz will not be valid without Gazprom’s approval.”

As I recall Ukraine and Turkmenistan never got the gas pipeline project agreed on in 2000 off the ground. So this proposed deal will entail some new delivery challenges. But Itera’s been out of the picture for a while and I don’t know what leverage Gazprom has over ETG. That is, what can Gazprom do to muck up the deal other than reduce exports to Ukraine? Do they even have leverage on that dimension with Tymoshenko back in the saddle and Turkmenistan approximately able to produce enough to cover Ukraine’s gas shortfall (probably at the expense of production earmarked for Russia)? Aren’t Gazprom’s hands pretty much tied here?

By: Katy

Katy — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 14:36:12 +0000

If this base comes in, I’ll join the army.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 09:47:22 +0000

And since we’re on the topic if Turkmenistan, the latest is that Niyazov has declared his plans to build a zoo in the Kara-Kum desert just north of Ashgabad. Among other birds will be penguins. Read more (in Russian) here:

http://top.rbc.ru/index.shtml?/news/funs/2005/09/08/08104231_bod.shtml

or in English here;

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16521525-13762,00.html?name=otherside

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 09:37:50 +0000

And here’s that Kommersant story in English, by the way;

http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?idr=529&id=606613

By: brian

brian — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 02:51:15 +0000

Turns out the original poster of the Dr. Akiner notice removed my post (both times), not Nathan. I appologize for blaming the website. In any case the original post has now been removed. I don’t think my post was THAT contraversial, it was along the lines of:

Maybe Dr. Akiner could produce another television commercial for the Uzbek government afterwards. Shortly after the indident in Andijan, Dr. Akiner
decided to go on Uzbek state television and do an
interview discussing her findings. To me that is
supporting Uzbek government propaganda. Dr. Akiner
should know that the only reason that she (he?) was
granted an interview is because her findings supported
the Uzbek government. Even though she was merely
reporting her own opinion, I think this was supporting
Uzbek government propaganda because no other competing
opinions were allowed to be mentioned.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 22:28:31 +0000

This is off topic, but someone keeps censoring my comment. I’ve posted replies twice to the message about Dr. Shirin Akiner’s talk. Hours later they were removed. This doesn’t seem like any technical accident – someone seems to be censoring my comment about Dr. Akiner.

Is this website owned by the Uzbek government now or something? I didn’t know that there was a policy of censorship here. .. I kinda thought we had a free exchange of ideas here.