Kazakhstan, Astana, Nov 16 /Trend D. Mukhtarov/
The first two batches of Kazakh oil of 20,000 tons each have already been sent to Chinese refineries for processing, a representative of LLP Sinooil told Trend anonymously during the second day of the international conference on the Central Asian oil products market.
"The first batch of fuel should come back in the next few days and it will be about 80 per cent of the volume of oil that is left for processing to China (80 per cent of the 40,000 tons of oil)," the source said.
He noted that the first batch of oil products from China will be sold at only four stations in Almaty.
"The supply of high octane gasoline AI-93 and AI-96 will be sent to Almaty, as it is geographically closer to the border with China," the company representative said.
Processing Kazakh oil in refineries of bordering countries within the customs procedure is supposed to stabilise the situation on the market of high-octane gasoline of Kazakhstan until the completion of reconstruction of three refineries.
According to the senior expert from the department for monitoring oil and petroleum products for the Kazakhstan Oil and Gas Ministry, Murat Turdybekov, under the current system the Kazakh Oil Ministry is planning to deliver some 1.5 million tons of oil a year, processing of which will lead to the import of about one million tons of high-octane gasoline per year to Kazakhstan.
In addition gasoline and diesel which are produced at the Urumchi and Dushanzi refineries belong to the state standard-III, which corresponds to the Euro-3 international class," the representative of the oil and gas company said.
He noted that it is expected that these two Chinese refineries will export jet fuel produced by processing customer-owned oil to Kazakhstan.