Kazakhstan, Astana, Feb. 25 / Trend A. Maratov /
The financial crisis has prevented KazMunayGas (KMG) from implementing the construction of an oil refinery in Ceyhan, KMG Corporate Center Managing Director Tolegen Bozzhanov told Trend.
"KMG has studied the project, made the calculations, and all converged successfully. Strategically our oil reached Ceyhan via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, but as we know, the financial crisis emerged, and the calculations turned out that building a new plant there with all the favorable economy was much more expensive than buying an existing [one] in Europe," Bozzhanov said.
Several years ago, Kazakh experts considered the project to build a refinery in the Turkish port of Ceyhan as the most promising. Based on the project, it was planned to build a plant with a capacity of 15 million tons. The consortium included KMG, Indian Oil India, Turkish Calik Enerji and Italy's Eni.
"For example, KMG purchased the same Romanian Rompetrol for $1.75 billion. Today, according to experts, $5-$10 million is required to build a similar plant in Ceyhan, as we did the calculations at 10 million and 15 million tons. The cost is expensive as the price for materials and services increased," he said.
In addition, he said, at a time when the project was discussed, the price for ground has jumped in the port of Ceyhan.
"It made no sense for us to implement this project," he added.