Kazakhstan, Astana / corr Trend K.Konirova / In November the national company of Kazakhstan KazMunayGas will acquire a feasibility study of the future plant on production of high-quality of bitumen specially adapted to sharp continental climate of Kazakhstan, Shuhrat Danbay, the KazMunayGas Executive Director for oil refinery and petro-chemistry, said.
" Shell Global Solution is involved in the development of technological scheme for this production. It will be bitumen meeting the international standards, retaining the difference in temperature from +58 to -34," Danbay said.
The enterprise will be placed in Atirau region, which will deliver oil from the Karajanabasmunay field, which is suitable for bitumen production due to its quality.
According to Danbay, Kazakhstan's demand for bitumen is 220,000 tons a year, including 20,000 produced at an only plant in Pavlador. The rest 200,000 tons, with over 90% produced in the neighboring Russia.
By 2015 Kazakhstan's demand in bitumen will increase almost to 1mln tons year.
"New production is in condition to cover the country's demand. It will output 420,000 tons of bitumen a year in the first stage. If our partner in Karajanbasmunay, the Chinese company CNPC is interested in the project, l supply to the bitumen plant might double, respectively doubling the output," Danbay stressed.
At present, Kazakhstan is one of 20 countries with the multi-direction road network with the length of 65,000km.
"However, 6,000 of them are covered by asphalt and the rest by ballast and simply ground," he said.
Presently, the bitumen consumption worldwide reaches 100mln tons of bitumen a year. Demand for this product increased over the past few years due to Iran, China and India. Thus, consumes 2mln tosn of bitumen and has 5 plants on its production. Last year China's demand was 9mln tons and this year it will attain 11mln tons a year, and India 6mln tons.