Russia’s foreign currency reserves are being fast eroded as the government tries in vain to brake the Russian ruble decline under tumbling commodity prices. Look for Russia to follow the road to a still more authoritarian state.
Continue reading →Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR and Kazakhstan’s state monopoly KazMunaiGaz (KMG) this month signed an agreement moving Caspian energy projects for Europe forward as they set out the main principles for a transport system to convey Kazakhstani oil across the … Continue reading →
The Kazakhstan financial crisis, where the economy has endured a switchback progress since independence from the Kremlin in 1991, is discovering the benefits of salting away wealth in the good times as it seeks to survive the global downturn without … Continue reading →
The Ukraine financial crisis, exacerbated by political turmoil and including the banking sector, has driven the principal national stock equities indicator, the PFTS Index, down 78 per cent from a high of 1,209 in mid-March to 266 on Monday. The … Continue reading →
Moscow’s equity markets, whose benchmark measure has declined with increasing rapidity since the start of the year, reflect the fact that the invasion of Georgia has made the Russian downturn worse. The dollar-denominated RTS index is down 33 per cent … Continue reading →
The armed conflict between Russian and Georgia has further exposed the fragile position of the energy links running through the smaller country from the Caspian Sea to developed market economies South Ossetia energy geopolitics on the ground today Russian forces … Continue reading →
Corruption and politics in Ukraine threaten to choke off, at least in the near term, the expansion of oil exports, through the Odessa-Brody pipeline, from Azerbaijan and eventually Kazakhstan to Europe. This is the significance of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya … Continue reading →
The one-year anniversary of the EU’s Partnership Strategy with Central Asia (Central Asia Partnership) gets off to a slow start but is not without potential. Origins of the EU’s Central Asia Partnership Strategy One year ago this month, the European … Continue reading →
Prime Minister Karim Masimov has announced major Kazakhstan energy policy related decisions in the wake of President Nursultan Nazarbaev’s address to the nation last week. First, and most strikingly, he has ordered the suspension all negotiations with foreign investors on … Continue reading →
A little over a month ago, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbaev signed amendments passed several weeks previously by the Majilis (parliament) to the law “On the Subsurface and Subsurface Use” that would allow the government to amend or annul natural-resource contracts … Continue reading →