Azerbaijan, Baku, March 5 / Trend E.Kosolapova /
The development of the oil products market is the top priority of Kazakhstan's economic policy, chairman of the Ecology and Nature Committee of the Kazakh Majilis (lower chamber of parliament) Alexander Milutin believes, a statement of Majilis said today.
However, he said, to achieve this goal Kazakhstan needs to resolve several issues, particularly regarding the low level of competitiveness of the refineries, and a high level of the domestic market's dependence on imports.
"The state program for accelerated industrial-innovative development of Kazakhstan set the task to increase the depth of oil refining and bringing the quality of domestic oil products to international standards. Re-equipment of factories is underway, but it takes time," said Milutin at the governmental hour in Majilis on Monday.
He said the current problem is the import of crude oil for Pavlodar and Shymkent refineries, which, due to short supply of crude oil from Russia, do not operate at full capacity. And that, ultimately, affects the volume of oil production and leads to an increase in cost per unit for processing.
"Moreover, if the problem of Shymkent refinery in the future, we will solve due to Kumkol, the provision of Pavlodar refinery with own crude oil will still be a big problem for us," said Milutin.
He said in addition these two problems are compounded by the fact that "all legislative regulation of the oil and gas is aimed to stimulate the production and export of crude oil and virtually doesn't stimulate such issues as deep processing of oil or improvement of petroleum products' transportation".
"All these problems have long been known, a lot of laws and regulations accepted, but the problems unfortunately remain," Milutin said.
To solve these problems he offers to think about creating civilized, based on modern technology mini-factories for deep processing of oil.
"Saying civilized I mean not the existing mini-factories that manufacture low-octane gasoline and diesel fuel, but mini-factories, working on advanced technologies," noted Milutin.
Secondly, he said, it is necessary to focus on the trasfer of transport to natural gas.
"Use of natural gas [...] as a fuel for transport [...] is very important in terms of ecological rehabilitation of heavily polluted cities of our country," he said.
Milutin also offers to solve at governmental level the issue of retail prices for high-octane gasoline and jet fuel, and the issue of quality of fuels and lubricants at gas stations, which often do not correspond to declared.