Baku, Azerbaijan, April 3
By Fakhri Vakilov –Trend:
Uzbekistan has allocated $553 million for the modernization of the Bukhara oil refinery in 2020, Trend reports via Uzbek media.
The plant, founded in 1997, will be technologically updated for the first time. After completion of the works, the refinery will be able to process 2.5 million tons of oil and gas condensate annually, which will result in the production of 1.2 million tons of Euro 5 gasoline, 200,000 tons of aviation kerosene, 750,000 tons of diesel fuel and 30,000 tons of fuel oil.
The Bukhara Refinery has a processing capacity of 2.5 million tons of oil and gas condensate per year. However, due to the decrease in hydrocarbon feedstock loading at the Bukhara refinery is 62.2 percent.
It was noted that the construction of an oil refinery complex in the Jizzakh region, which began in April 2017, had been suspended earlier. Deputy Director of Neftegazinvest Husniddin Turaev noted that priority was given to the modernization of the existing Bukhara and Fergana plants.
The modernization project of the Bukhara refinery will be included in the biennial program for 2019–2020, in the framework of which nine large-scale projects of national importance will be implemented. The amount of investments should be $1.3 billion.
Moreover, this year, due to investments in the amount of $50 million, the "Gazlineftkazibchikarish" company will be upgraded and will put into operation equipment for the production of 80,000 tons of propane-butane mixture annually.
The 2019-2020 projects will also begin to expand and reconstruct the largest underground gas storage (UGS) in Gazly in Uzbekistan in the amount of $800 million. It is planned to increase the storage capacity to 10 billion cubic meters (currently estimated at 3 billion).
At the end of October 2018, the Uzbek company Neftegazinvest and the Russian company Forus created a joint venture to expand the capacity of the UGS Gasli with the development of the field.
The Gazli gas field is one of the largest in the Bukhara-Khiva region; it has been exploited since 1961. The initial gas reserves were about 500 billion cubic meters. At present, the gas reserves of the field are exhausted.
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