Azerbaijan, Baku, 12 March / Trend, A. Taghiyeva /
Attraction of funds for the project on construction of SOCAR's (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) oil refinery Star in Turkey will be completed by June of this year, the head of SOCAR Turkey Enerji, a board member of Petkim Petrochemical Holding Kenan Yavuz told Trend on Tuesday.
According to Yavuz, the tender winning consortium consists of the following companies: Spanish Tecnicas Reunidas, Italian Saipem, South Korea's GS Engineering & Construction and Japan's Itochu.
"It is expected that construction of the Star refinery will finish in 2016. To date, $ 200 million of the available $5 billion have already been invested in the project," he said.
Yavuz noted that Star refinery's processing capacity will equal 10 million tons of oil and it would be capable of processing such oil grades as Azeri Light, Kirkuk and Urals. Annual production at the refinery will equal 1.6 million tons of naphtha, thanks to which Petkim's dependence on imports of this type of oil product will be reduced to zero, he said.
According to Yavuz, along with naphtha, Star refinery will also produce 5.9 million tons of diesel fuel with ultra-low sulfur, 500 tons of aviation fuel, 630,000 tons of petroleum coke, 240,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas, 415,000 tons of mixed xylenes, 75,000 tons of olefin liquefied petroleum gas and 145,000 tons of sulfur.
Up to six billion dollars will be sent to back the construction of a new oil refinery in Turkey. The work will be partly financed by shareholders' funds (30 per cent) which will equal $1.8 billion, while the rest will be financed through bank loans, a SOCAR senior representative said earlier.
The annual production capacity of naphtha at the plant which is used by Petkim as a raw material, will reach 1.66 million tons. More than 80 per cent of the Petkim needs in naphtha are provided by imports. With the commissioning of the new refinery, dependence on imports will be reduced to zero.