Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev highlighted the start-up of the largest European energy infrastructure project, involving: Shah Deniz Phase Two of field development and three dedicated pipelines to connect that Azerbaijani gas field with European Union territory. The... MORE

Russian Gazprom is taking over most of the core business of its German partner, Wintershall, in the natural gas trade and storage business. The two companies had conducted that business through the Wintershall-Gazprom joint venture, WINGAS, from 1993 to date. Gazprom is now turning WINGAS... MORE

On January 13, Gazprom Vice-President and Gazprom Export CEO Aleksandr Medvedev dropped by an annual meeting of Wintershall’s staff, at company headquarters in Kassel. It was, in this case, the guest who did the welcoming: Medvedev welcomed WINGAS, the Wintershall-Gazprom joint venture, to “become a... MORE

Full-scale investment approved at Shah Deniz, and supply contracts secured in Europe, make it possible for pipeline construction to proceed along the 3,500-kilometer Southern Gas Corridor, from Azerbaijan to European Union territory in Italy. The cumulative investments are estimated at $25 billion in the offshore... MORE

The Shah Deniz gas producers’ consortium has approved the final investment decision (FID) on December 17, 2013, launching Phase Two of production at the project in Azerbaijan (see accompanying article). This decision has two immediate consequences, both of them pre-programmed. It validates the long-term gas... MORE

On December 17, 2013, in Baku, the Shah Deniz natural gas producers’ consortium approved the Final Investment Decision (FID) to start Phase Two of production. The investment commitment is valued at $25 billion for field development, separately from the estimated $20 billion for the construction... MORE

Denominating the Republic of Moldova’s indigenous ethnicity and the state language as Moldovan or Romanian is a salient, continuous, and often emotional controversy in Moldova. This issue is far more political than philological. And it is often misperceived as involving a choice between Moldovan statehood... MORE

On December 5 and 24, 2013, Moldova’s Constitutional Court issued a ruling and the substantiating arguments (Moldpres, Unimedia, December 5, 24). These documents are widely interpreted to require the renaming of the state language, from Moldovan to Romanian. If so, any renaming of the state... MORE

On December 18, 2013, the prosecution filed charges in a new case against Tbilisi mayor Gigi Ugulava, the last major holdout official from the opposition United National Movement (UNM). The prosecution now alleges, in essence, that Ugulava had misappropriated 48 million lari (some $25 million)... MORE

Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili, in office since November 2013, has heralded a resurgence in politically-motivated prosecutions against officials of the previous government and current opposition party, the United National Movement (UNM) (see EDM, November 22, 2013; January 7, 2014). Recent developments in several high-profile... MORE