Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 28
By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:
SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) and the French company Axens signed a contract for the construction of the diesel fuel and gasoline hydro-treating units as part of the modernization of the Heydar Aliyev Baku Oil Refinery, SOCAR said Oct. 28.
While speaking at the event, SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev said that it is planned to increase the processing capacity of the plant and establish the production of high-quality oil products meeting the Euro-5 standard in a short period as part of the reconstruction and modernization of the Heydar Aliyev refinery.
"It is planned to reconstruct the primary processing, catalytic cracking, catalytic reforming and factory-wide units," he said. "It is planned to build several new units, including the bitumen production, diesel fuel hydro-treating, hydrogen production, amine treating units, LPG Merox unit, isomerization unit, units hydro-treating naphtha and gasoline obtained as a result of the catalytic cracking, the sulfur production unit and others."
"In this regard, the work on licensing the available units at the plant and designing the future units was launched," he said. "A number of contracts will be the result of our talks. They are to be signed in October-November 2015."
He added that last week a contract was signed with the Austrian company Poerner for the construction and licensing of a new bitumen production plant, to be commissioned in mid-2018.
"Axens was chosen as a licensor of diesel fuel and gasoline hydro-treating units as a result of the analysis for obtaining the license for other main units and preparing of a technological design package," a statement said.
It was stressed that SOCAR has been cooperating with Axens for a long time. So, naphtha, diesel fuel and kerosene hydro-treating units at the Star refinery in Turkey are being built on the basis of Axens licenses.
The contract was signed by the director of the Heydar Aliyev refinery Elman Ismayilov and Axens CEO Jean Sentenac.
Modernization of the Heydar Aliyev Baku Oil Refinery will be complete by the end of 2018. The refinery processing capacity will increase from 6 to 7.5 million tons per year after reconstruction. The cost of modernization is estimated at $1 billion.
SOCAR announced about the elimination of Azneftyag refinery and merging it with the Heydar Aliyev Baku Oil Refinery in January 2015.
This decision was taken as part of the work to improve and optimize SOCAR's structure.
Azerbaijan produced over 5.31 million tons of oil in 2014 compared to 5.09 million tons of oil in 2013.
Edited by CN
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