Azerbaijan, Baku, 24 September / Trend / The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), which in alliance with Turcas Petrol and Injaz Projects purchased 51% stocks of the Turkish Petkim petrochemical holding, intends to improve the yield of the enterprise to $4bln from $1.9bln by 2015, SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev said to official press.
Petkim's production capacity is 3.2mln tons. This figure will rise to 63mln tons by 2015. Turkey's demand in petrochemical products has totalled $6.1bln and it will be annually rising by 11-12%. Petkim's production covers about 25% of Turkey's market.
An oil refinery will be constructed in Turkey to provide the holding with raw materials. Construction will take at least 4 years. By estimate, the investments in the refinery will comprise $4-5bln.
Technological issues are being specified at the moment - whether the refinery will produce petrol, diesel fuel and naphtha. Refinery's capacity will total 8-10mln tons. The sort of oil to be processed at the refinery will be one of the top issues during development of the feasibility study.
SOCAR is already controlling the Petkim Board of Directors. Investments in Petkim worth about $2bln. A feasibility study will be designed before the arrangements, technologies will be selected, regional and world markets will be studied. Precise directions of investments will be determined by mid 2009.
SOCAR/Turcas/Injaz acquired 51% shares of the holding for $2.04bln.
Turkey currently imports 70-75% of the necessary chemical products and the investments of SOCAR/Turcas/Injaz in development of Petkim will enable increase of the import up to 30%.
Petkim Petrokimya Holding is specialized in the production of plastic packages, fabric, detergents and is the only producer of these goods in Turkey, exporting one fourth part of its output.
The correspondent can be contacted at [email protected]