Young people heat themselves by the eternal flame at a WWII monument in Bishkek last February. Each winter in Kyrgyzstan the energy situation seems to worsen; blackouts last longer, and officials seem less able to do anything to improve conditions. This year is expected to be particularly difficult. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By Anna Lelik
BISHKEK, Oct 16 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Each winter in Kyrgyzstan the energy situation seems to worsen; blackouts last longer, and officials seem less able to do anything to improve conditions. This year is expected to be particularly difficult.

The winter heating season has not even begun and already lots of people are bracing for months of hardship. A video, posted Oct. 12 on YouTube, depicting Kyrgyz doctors having to perform open-heart surgery amid a sudden blackout, is helping to heighten anxiety about the coming winter.Last year, when temperatures dropped to -20C (-4F), the 89-year-old pensioner spent three months living in a vegetable storage shed with a small stove she kept going with a mix of coal dust and dung.

In another alarming signal, Bishkek’s local energy-distribution company, Severelectro, sent out advisories with recent utility bills, describing the situation as “critical” and begging customers to conserve electricity and use alternatives to heat their homes.

Southern Kyrgyzstan has been without gas since April, when Russia’s Gazprom took over the country’s gas network, and neighbouring Uzbekistan said it would not work with the Russians. That has forced residents in the south to use precious and expensive electricity to cook, or resort to burning dung and sometimes even furniture.

On top of that, a drought has hampered operations at Kyrgyzstan’s main hydroelectric plant at the aging Toktogul Dam.

After President Almazbek Atambayev criticised the energy minister on Oct. 9, the minister promptly quit. But a personnel reshuffle will not do much to reassure citizens, such as pensioner Valentina Chebotok, who lives in Maevka, a Bishkek suburb.

When she began to contemplate the hassles associated with winter, Chebotok started to cry. Last year, when temperatures dropped to -20C (-4F), the 89-year-old pensioner spent three months living in a vegetable storage shed with a small stove she kept going with a mix of coal dust and dung. This year, Chebotok managed to secure a gas heater, but on her pension of 87 dollars per month she will have to use it sparingly.

There has been some good news: Kazakhstan agreed on Oct. 14 to supply over a billion kWh of electricity this fall and winter. In September, the Russian energy giant Gazprom announced gas prices for exports to northern Kyrgyzstan – that is, the only areas connected to its network, since Uzbekistan refuses to supply its gas to the southern network – would fall 20 percent.

But in many parts of the country the electrical system is overloaded. Prior to the Gazprom deal, many consumers grew tired of constant gas shortages, and converted their heating systems to run on electricity. That is what Maksim Tsai, a mechanical engineer in Bishkek, did seven years ago.

“I was forced to switch to electric heating. And Kyrgyzstan was [at the time] considered a country with abundant electricity,” he told EurasiaNet.org.

Citing a need to conserve electricity, government officials have made often contradictory statements about the type of three-phase electrical adaptors that Tsai and many others now use. Some officials have said they want to ban three-phase adaptors, which can support higher electricity loads; others express an interest in increasing tariffs for three-phase households. Tsai said he now plans to switch back to gas.

“The government took the right decision to transfer Kyrgyzgaz to Gazprom. Now I have got assurance that we won’t have problems with gas, though it is still expensive,” he said.

The current confusion offers crooked officials an opportunity to line their pockets. A hotel owner in Bishkek complained in September that Severelectro officials came to his business and attempted to seize his three-phase adaptor.

“They came over and made us sign a document saying that we understood why the three-phase adaptor was being confiscated. We asked for a copy of the document, but they said we couldn’t get one because ‘we don’t want the press to get hold of this.’ We were allowed to keep our adaptor after we paid a bribe,” the hotel owner said.

The officials warned the hotel owner to expect blackouts this winter at his central Bishkek location, “‘Maybe five hours a day, maybe more, they said.’”

Another heating alternative is coal. In August, Prime Minister Djoomart Otorbaev called on Kyrgyzstanis to use coal this winter for heating, since it is “a relatively inexpensive fuel.”

Though Kyrgyzstan is endowed with plenty of coal, the industry is plagued by scandals and, reportedly, organised criminal activity – factors that drive up prices and force consumers, including government agencies, to buy imports.

Sultanbek Dzholdoshbaev, a wholesaler at the main coal market outside of Bishkek, said that supplies from the famed and fought-over Kara-Keche deposit have decreased in recent years, pushing up prices.

He explained that local gangs took control of Kara-Keche during the chaos following President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s 2010 overthrow. Moreover, the state-run company that manages Kara-Keche is unable to run such a large-scale operation efficiently, Dzholdoshbaev asserted.

Meanwhile, prices keep rising. According to sellers and buyers at the coal market, the price for a tonne of coal has increased 25 to 35 percent this season. That might be in part due to demand. Delivery-truck drivers say demand has been high since August, when the government started warning about the tough winter ahead.

If those living in freestanding homes have options, such as gas and coal, the tens of thousands of Bishkek residents living in multi-story buildings with central heating provided by Severelectro have only electricity as backup.

Larisa Musuralieva, who lives in an apartment block in a southern district of the capital, said that the old radiators in her flat do not provide sufficient warmth: “These radiators heat so badly […] so we use an electric heater. If blackouts happen this winter, it will be very cold at home.”

Editor’s note:  Anna Lelik is a Bishkek-based reporter. Chris Rickleton contributed reporting. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The deepening Ukrainian crisis is placing Turkey in a difficult diplomatic position. At stake for officials in Ankara are Turkey’s commitments to its Western allies and its cultural kin, Crimean Tatars, against its economic and political relationship with Moscow.

Turkey’s diplomatic dilemma intensified in early May amid a rapid escalation of tension between Crimean Tatars and Russian officials. The early May troubles were triggered by the banishment of Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Jemilev.“The crucial question is ‘What does Putin want to do? Does he plan just to stay in eastern Ukraine, or does he have plans on [sic] the Caucasus?" -- Atilla Yeşilada

Tatar protesters conducted several rallies seeking to have the ban on Jemilev lifted. Local Russian officials responded with a threat to prosecute Tatar leaders and ban their civic organization, the Mejlis.

Prior to the protests, Jemilev lobbied Turkish officials directly for support. “I told the Turkish government that I was banned from entering Crimea under fictitious pretexts,” Jemilev said on May 3 when speaking to reporters in Kyiv.

Ankara did indeed speak up on Tatars’ behalf. But the Turkish statement was carefully worded, indicating that Ankara is wary of angering its powerful Russian neighbour. “We expect the legitimate body of the Crimean Tatars to get the respect they deserve,” said the May 5 Foreign Ministry statement. The statement also criticised Jemilev’s banishment.

“Turkey is taking a cautious approach,” observed Turkish foreign-policy specialist Sinan Ülgen, a visiting scholar at the Brussels-based Carnegie Europe think-tank.

“On the one hand, it attaches importance to territorial integrity of nation states; it has a kinship with the Crimean Tatars and it is a NATO member,” Ülgen continued.

“But on the other, there is a deep economic engagement with Russia and, on top of that, there is a personal relationship between [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan. That’s why it didn’t go as far as the U.S. in terms of imposing sanctions against Russia.”

The caution exhibited on Crimean Tatars is uncharacteristic for Erdoğan, who prides himself on a firebrand reputation – never more so when it comes to defending Muslims abroad. But the Turkish government claims its approach toward Russia is working.

Officials cite as an example President Putin’s Apr. 21 decree that rehabilitated Tatars repressed under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and promised a “national, cultural and spiritual renaissance” of Crimea’s minority groups.

In a move that was widely interpreted as a goodwill gesture to Moscow, the government-run national air carrier Turkish Airlines has announced that it will resume flights to Crimea in June.

An investigation into Crimean Tatars’ alleged “illegal mass activities” is also raising questions in Turkey over Ankara’s approach.

Jemilev “carries potential for political embarrassment for the [Turkish] government,” noted Semih Idiz, diplomatic columnist for the Turkish newspaper Taraf. “Erdoğan has said he has discussed the issue with Putin and he has been told that Moscow has said they will be more careful about it, but the leader of the Crimean Tatars is barred from Crimea and there is nothing really Ankara can do.”

A Turkish Foreign Ministry representative could not be reached for comment.

Moscow’s real leverage over Ankara is natural gas. In 2013, Turkey received roughly 60 percent of its natural-gas imports from Russia, according to the International Energy Agency.

“I am sure Turkey can’t start a new cold war,” said Umut Uzer, an assistant professor of international relations at Istanbul Technical University. “The fact that Turkey is so dependant on natural gas from Russia …. [means that] Turkey definitely has to take that into account.”

The dependency on Russia seems set to continue for the foreseeable future. “Given the fact that our hydro-electric dams have completely failed to produce electricity because of the drought, even in summer, any cut-off in supply [of gas] could have a drastic effect on the Turkish economy,” warned Atilla Yeşilada, a political consultant at Istanbul’s Global Source Partners, an investor consultancy.

Elsewhere, the Ukraine crisis is encouraging European Union states to lessen their energy dependency on Russia, thus presenting Ankara with opportunities to expand its role as a transit state. The recently launched Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline project will cross Turkey to bring 16 billion cubic metres of Azerbaijani gas per year to Greece, Italy and Balkan customers. More projects would follow, if Turkey had its way.

“Turkey would like to become a regional energy hub in the region,” said Emre İşeri, an assistant professor of international relations at Izmir’s Yaşar University.

For Turkey, there are two significant obstacles standing in the way of realizing its pipeline ambitions – high costs and Russian interests. Moscow clearly would prefer to maintain its strong energy position in Turkey and the EU.

In April, for example, the deputy head of Russia’s state-run energy giant Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, met with Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız to explore the possibility of expanding the company’s exports to Turkey, which, at 26.61 billion cubic metres, currently ranks second only to Germany (40.18 bcm) as a GazProm market.

Ultimately, the Ankara’s hand could be forced by Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “The crucial question is ‘What does Putin want to do?’” said Yesilada, the political consultant. “Does he plan just to stay in eastern Ukraine, or does he have plans on [sic] the Caucasus? Does he want to integrate [Turkish ally] Azerbaijan back into Russia’s sphere of influence?”

At present, only Putin knows the answers to such questions. Depending on his choices, Turkey may feel compelled to harden its line on its relations with Russia.

Editor’s note:  Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

A disruption of Ukraine's gas supplies would affect many other parts of Europe as well. Credit: Thierry Ehrmann/cc by 2.0

By Micah Luxen
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2014 (IPS)

It’s springtime in Ukraine, but conflict and economic threats are bringing an early chill. During these months when the country normally stores up energy reserves for winter, access to natural gas may be Russia’s best weapon to influence Ukraine’s new government.

“Ukraine is heavily dependent on natural gas,” said Edward Chow, a senior fellow of the Energy and National Security Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)."If you can’t get sufficient energy in, Ukraine collapses. Political scientists for years have been talking about failed states. You have one." -- Kent Moors

According to CSIS, 40 percent of the country’s energy consumption is natural gas, and 60 percent of that is supplied by Russia.

Under a system designed in the Soviet-era, Ukraine stores up natural gas reserves from Russia and then distributes them to Europe.

“So even though Ukraine’s natural gas needs are not very high in the summertime, if they’re not building stock in the summertime, then they will cause a winter supply crisis,” Chow told IPS. “We don’t have to wait until December to figure that out.”

In numerous disputes over debts and prices over the past decade, Russia has cut off the supply of natural gas through Ukraine – most recently for three days in January 2006 and 20 days in January 2009.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy company, confirmed to IPS, “As of today the Ukraine has not paid its debt for the Russian gas. The April bill is overdue, no payment has been received. The outstanding gas debt of the Ukraine rose to 3.508 billion dollars.”

The company has said that unless the Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz pays its energy debt, Russia will require prepayment before distribution.

“People were pretty much freezing in 2009 in parts of Europe which are heavily dependent on Russia for gas imports,” said Chow, who predicts this crisis could last much longer.

“In terms of politics, Russia sets prices arbitrarily, but judiciously,” said Jan Svejnar, director of the Centre on Global Economic Governance at Columbia University.

“With an unwanted government in Ukraine, prices were high. With a pro-Russian government, significant discounts apply,” Svejnar told IPS.

In December 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to buy Ukrainian bonds from former president Viktor Yanukovych, which provided the funds to pay for Russian gas. When an interim government took over from Yanukovych, Putin withdrew support, cancelled the bond purchases and raised the price of gas by 80 percent.

Naftogaz hasn’t made payments demanded by Gazprom since January.

The rest of Europe, which depends on Russia for a third of its gas supply, would be affected by a supply disruption to Ukraine. The impact falls disproportionately on countries in Southeast Europe, which do not have alternative supplies. A limited supply of natural gas arrives to Western Europe through pipelines that bypass Ukraine, such as the newly constructed Nord Stream through the Baltic Sea.

Even so, experts say that Western Europe could not send a reverse-flow energy supply east. Russia’s Gazprom prohibits the resale or re-transport of natural gas from Russia.

“Gazprom has a number of ongoing agreements with the major utilities in Western Europe,” said Kent Moors, executive chair of the Global Energy Symposium, “so there are some vested interests in Western Europe that really wouldn’t like to see sanctions that would impact that ongoing trade.”

According to CSIS, if the European utilities not tied up in Russian contracts were to move natural gas from Europe in reverse mode to Ukraine, it would at best satisfy less than a third of what Ukraine needs this coming winter.

“The question is not one of leverage, it’s one of political will, and who’s willing to use it and who’s not,” said Chow, who has more than 30 years of oil industry experience, including work in Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Kent believes the countries that depend almost entirely on Russian oil, such as the Baltic states and Poland, would be more likely to take a hard line against Russia “because of the historical experience.”

Those countries that are less vulnerable, as a result of increased energy diversity, such as France, Italy and Germany, are more inclined to be soft on Russia. “So in my mind, it’s more a matter of political will than economic leverage,” he told IPS.

The CSIS’s Chow said that while Europe depends on Russia for 30 percent of its gas supply, Russia depends on Europe for 80 percent of its gas export market. “So who’s more dependent on whom?” As a result, Chow says that Russia won’t want to cut off supplies, and its own profits, through Ukraine for the long term.

Kent, who has a Ph.D. in political science, says the goal must be to get Ukraine through the next winter. “Because if you can’t get sufficient energy in, Ukraine collapses. Political scientists for years have been talking about failed states. You have one. It’s not going to be able to function. And there’s probably some elements in Russia who are simply waiting for this to happen. And then they can say, look, it’s not our fault that Kiev collapsed under its own inability to function.”

The ambassadors of Ukraine and Russia declined to comment for this article.

Liana Foxvog (left) and Kalpona Akter (right) plan to take the anti-award to Gap's headquarters in San Francisco Credit: Ray Smith/IPS.

By Ray Smith
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 24 2014 (IPS)

As self-appointed global leaders gather at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos and discuss ‘The Reshaping of the World’, a stone’s throw away non-governmental organisations named this year’s winners for their dreaded Public Eye Awards.

The jury chose the American textile giant Gap, while 95,000 online voters honoured the Russian energy company Gazprom.“Davos is the global showcase for symbolic policy where arsonists dress up as firemen for a few days.”

“Sadly, there’s still a need for campaigns like ours that demand corporate accountability,” Silvie Lang said on behalf of the organisers, the Berne Declaration (BD), a Swiss NGO working for equitable North-South relations, and Greenpeace Switzerland.

“We are here to remind the corporate world and those hiding behind closed doors in Davos that the social and environmental consequences of their business activities affect not only people and the environment, but also the reputation of their company.”

Participating in the WEF is no option for the BD. “This kind of inclusion is far less effective than fundamental critique from outside,” its spokesperson Oliver Classen told IPS. “Davos is the global showcase for symbolic policy where arsonists dress up as firemen for a few days.”

This year, international NGOs proposed 15 nominees for the two shame awards, ranging from Glencore Xstrata and BASF as representatives of the extractive industry to pesticide producers and the U.S. garment company Gap. The latter was eventually chosen for the jury award.

On behalf of the jury, Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo said: “We shame Gap for its monstrous and disingenuous business practices consisting of hindering legally-binding agreements to substantially ameliorate working conditions.”

Gap declined to show up and receive the award. Instead, Kalpona Akter of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity and Liana Foxvog of the International Labour Rights Forum (ILRF) collected the prize.

Akter, a relentless grassroots activist, is herself a former child garment worker. “I sewed clothing for multinational corporations and made less than 10 dollars a month for 450 hours of work,” she said. Today, the minimum wage in Bangladesh is 68 dollars a month. “Due to inflation, it’s not much more than I used to earn,” Akter said.

Her main concern isn’t the low wages, however. “When workers speak up with concern about safety risks, they aren’t listened to.”

Three years ago, 29 workers were killed in a fire at one of Gap’s Bangladeshi supplier factories. After that, labour groups and unions negotiated with Gap to put an end to the constantly climbing death toll in the garment industry.

In all 1,129 Bangladeshi workers died in a deadly fire in a garments factory last year.

In a press statement, Gap stressed that it is a founding member of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety: “The Alliance is a serious and transparent, binding commitment on the part of its members to make urgent improvements to worker safety in Bangladesh.”

For Foxvog, the Alliance is “hardly more than a facelift.” She vowed to take the award directly to the Gap headquarters in San Francisco.

“We don’t want the companies to leave our country,” Akter said. “We want jobs, but they must be jobs with dignity. Global corporations must stop profiting off this low-road system.”

A third of the 280,000 people taking part in the online voting chose the energy giant Gazprom for the people’s award. That was not surprising, as the company had been in the spotlight for the past few months.

In September, Russian security forces arrested 28 Greenpeace activists and two journalists during a protest against oil drilling at their offshore platform Prirazlomnaya. In December, Gazprom became the first company that started to drill oil in the Arctic.

According to Greenpeace, Prirazlomnaya is far from some ultra-modern drilling unit. The absence of a publicly available and convincing response plan for any oil spill in one of the world’s most extreme environments worries activists deeply.

Greenpeace argues that Gazprom’s reliance on traditional clean-up methods would simply not work under icy conditions.

IPS requested Gazprom to comment on receiving the anti-award for “irresponsible business conduct at the cost of people and the environment.” Gazprom spokesperson Sergey Kupriyanov did not elaborate on its response plan, but stressed that the company was fully committed to the highest ecological standards.

“Therefore we are quite puzzled by the decision of the Public Eye Awards jury which seems to be motivated by anything but ecological concerns,” Kupriyanov told IPS.

He said that the Prirazlomnaya platform had been specifically designed for operation in the most hostile climate. “The applied drilling techniques prevent subsurface water pollution and the mixing of drilling and production waste with sea water.

“Specially designed oil spill prevention and response plans ensure that the platform crew is well equipped for emergency situations,” Kupriyanov told IPS.

Greenpeace’s Naidoo said his organisation considered calling for a boycott of Gazprom and its partner Shell, who had last year received an anti-award in Davos. “Our peaceful protest in the Arctic raised a lot of awareness,” he told IPS. “About five million people have signed up for our Arctic campaign, while the best of it is yet to come.”

Using the shame award to raise further awareness may be easier for the organisations dealing with Gap, as its consumer base differs much from that of Gazprom. Nobody depends on Gap clothes, but many depend on Gazprom’s oil and gas.

Criticising the energy giant my fall on deaf ears. “Even Gazprom, Rosneft or Chevron aren’t completely immune from public pressure though,” argued Naidoo. He said that these companies had so far ignored one thing: “Relations and reputation are a capital which is just as important for success as conventional capital.”