Uzbekistan to attract ADB assets for the construction of GTL plant
Uzbekistan, Tashkent, March 16 / Trend D.Azizov /
Uzbekistan is going to attract credits and commercial risk guarantees from the Asian Development Bank (ADB with the total amount of up to $ 500 million for construction project of a plant producing GTL synthetic liquid fuel, a source from the government circles of the country told Trend on Friday.
Estimated annual output of the plant with preliminary cost of $ 2.8 billion is 3.5 billion cubic meters of processed gas and 863,000 tons of diesel fuel, 304 tons of aviation kerosene, 395,000 tons of naphtha and 11.2 thousand tons of liquefied natural gas. The fuel will be manufactured out of the methane delivered from Shurtan GCC.
As reported earlier, in November 2009 the National Holding Company (NHC) "Uzbekneftegaz", South African Sasol and Malaysian Petronas signed the constituent documents on creation of the joint enterprise Uzbekistan-GTL for construction of a plant producing GTL synthetic fuel on the basis of Shurtan Gas Chemical Complex (GCC) in Qashqadaryo province (south of Uzbekistan). At the moment, Sasol and "Uzbekneftegaz" have shares of 44.5 percent each, Petronas - 11 percent.
It is planned that construction of the plant will be financed by own assets of the founding companies. Moreover, about 70 percent of the project costs are planned to be covered by assets attracted from a consortium of banks and international financial institutions under the terms of project financing.
According to the interviewee, at the moment the government of Uzbekistan and the administration of ADB are holding preliminary negotiations on the bank's participation in the consortium of the project creditors.
The parties are going to start detailed discussions after completion of its feasibility study being prepared by French Technip.
At the moment Technip is working over the second stage of the preliminary feasibility study. It finished work over the first stage in 2010.
The licensor of the synthetic liquid fuel production technology within the scope of the project is Sasol Technology (Pty) Ltd.
According to experts, GTL project will reduce Uzbekistan's dependence on imported crude oil and allow wider use of natural gas resources.
60 billion cubic meters of natural gas, part of which is exported, is produced in the country annually.
Compared to 2011, natural gas production in Uzbekistan reduced in 2012 by 0.2 percent - to 62.911 billion cubic meters.