Baku, Azerbaijan, June 1
By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:
Construction of the carbamide plant of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR has been completed by 95 percent, the plant’s director Khayal Jafarov said.
He made the remarks during the 24th Caspian International Oil and Gas Conference in Baku June 1.
He said that engineering work and procurement of equipment have been completed by 100 percent, construction work - by 89 percent, civil engineering work - by 97 percent, installation of equipment - by 75 percent.
“It is planned to complete all work and start adjustment and commissioning of the plant by the end of 2017,” he noted. “Production of carbamide at the plant will start in the first half of 2018.”
The plant will produce 650,000-660,000 tons of carbamide per year. It is planned to supply a quarter of production, that is, 150,000-200,000 tons of carbamide, to the Azerbaijani domestic market. The remaining part will be exported to Turkey, Georgia and the markets of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea countries.
South Korea’s Samsung Engineering won the tender for the construction of the carbamide plant. Samsung Engineering acts as a general contractor of the plant’s construction, but it has no license for production of carbamide and ammonia, which will be by-product in the carbamide production process. Therefore, the relevant licensing agreements were signed with Haldor Topsoe company (Denmark) for production of ammonia and Stamicarbon B.V. company (the Netherlands) for production of carbamide.
Production at the plant will be environmentally friendly, that is, no pollutant emissions into the atmosphere are expected.
The plant will have an autonomous electricity system. The plant will consume 25-26 MW of electricity per hour.
At first, financing of construction work was carried out from the Azerbaijani state budget and about 205 million manats were allocated from there before the beginning of 2015, but later it was decided to switch to project finance and negotiations with banks were started.
As a result, the Export–Import Bank of South Korea (EximBank) opened a line of credit worth 500 million euros under Azerbaijan’s state guarantee to complete the construction of the plant. EximBank will directly provide 251 million euros, while 249 million euros will be allocated by three commercial banks (Italy’s UniCredit S.p.A., France’s Societe Generale S.A. and Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG) with the support of EximBank.