Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31
By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:
The work for construction of the urea plant of the Azerbaijani state company SOCAR has been completed by 99.4 percent, Director of the plant Khayal Jafarov said during the 25th Anniversary International Caspian Oil & Gas Conference in Baku May 31.
He noted that, engineering work and procurement of equipment, as well as civil work is completed by 100 percent, and construction work and installation of equipment - by 98 percent.
"It is planned to complete all mechanical work in the second quarter of 2018. The turnkey project is expected to be delivered in the fourth quarter of this year," Jafarov said.
He noted that the first auxiliary product, ammonia, would be obtained in August.
"After that, the urea production section will start working, and the first finished product under the brand “Made in Azerbaijan” will be obtained in October. Thus, by the end of this year, the plant will begin to work," Jafarov said.
The plant will produce 1,200 tons of ammonia and, subsequently, 2,000 tons of urea per day. It is planned to supply a quarter of production, that is, 150,000 tons of urea (with a potential growth of up to 200,000 tons, or 30 percent of production) 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.
The cost of the project is 750-780 million euros.
South Korea’s Samsung Engineering won the tender for the construction of the urea plant. Samsung Engineering acts as a general contractor of the plant’s construction, but it has no license for production of urea and ammonia, which will be by-product in the urea 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 urea.
Production at the plant will be environmentally friendly. The plant will have an autonomous electricity system. The plant will consume 25-26 MW of electricity per hour.
Some 1.3 million cubic meters of gas per day or 435 million cubic meters of gas per year will be required to operate the urea plant at full capacity.