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Uzbekistan to attract another investor to GTL plant construction project

Business Materials 25 April 2014 10:56 (UTC +04:00)
Uzbekistan plans to attract a fourth investor into the construction project of a GTL plant.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan, April 24
By Demir Azizov- Trend:

Uzbekistan plans to attract a fourth investor into the construction project of a GTL plant.

Gas to liquids (GTL) is a refinery process to convert natural gas or other gaseous hydrocarbons into longer-chain hydrocarbons such as gasoline or diesel fuel.

The government instructed the Uzbekneftegaz National Holding Company and Uzbekistan GTL JV on defining the fourth member of the "Production of synthetic liquid fuels based on purified methane Shurtan GCC" project, a source in the government circles told Trend.

The fourth investor should be able to mobilize additional financial resources for the project's implementation.

"Potential investors have already been defined, but the choice has not made yet," the source said.

Qatar Petroleum company is considered a favorite among other possible investors. Currently negotiations with this company are underway for participating in the mentioned project, the source said.

Originally, Uzbekneftegaz, South African Sasol Ltd., and Malasiyan Petronas International Corporation Ltd. Limited established "Uzbekistan GTL" joint venture on equal rights, to construct the plant.

In 2013, Petronas asked its share to be reduced to 11 percent, making the shares of Sasol and Uzbekneftegaz equal at 44,5 percent.

It is expected that the construction worth $5.6 billion will start in autumn of 2014 and will be completed in early 2018.

Last July, Uzbekneftegaz started the construction of external infrastructure facilities of the plant.

The plant should annually process 3.5 billion cubic meters of gas and produce 860,000 tonnes of diesel fuel, 360,000 tonnes of aviation kerosene, 39o,000 tonnes of naphtha and 11,000 tonnes of liquefied gas.

Hyundai Engineering & Construction (South Korea) will deal with the technological part of the plant, while Uzbekistan's Shurtan gas chemical complex will provide raw materials.

The financing of the project is provided at the expense of own funds of joint venture founders, as well as a consortium of banks and financial institutions which provide loans on terms of project financing (up to 70 percent of the total amount).

Uzbekistan started to form a banking consortium to finance plant construction GTL last September.

According to experts, GTL project will reduce Uzbekistan's dependence on imports of crude oil and will allow wider use of gas raw materials.

Uzbekistan holds third place among the CIS countries for the production of natural gas and is among the ten largest gas-producing countries in the world. Every year, the country produces more than 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas, about 25 percent of which is exported.

Translated by S.I.
Edited by S.I.

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