Baku, Azerbaijan, July 28
By Kamila Aliyeva – Trend:
Uzbekistan expressed readiness to purchase up to 500,000 tons of oil from Russia for the refinery in the Jizzakh region, the Republic’s Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov said in a letter addressed to Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Russia’s Izvestia newspaper reported.
In the letter, Aripov asked to provide assistance in organizing work of the Russian companies.
"To date, the Uzbek side is ready to test pump 30,000 tons and purchase up to 500,000 tons of oil before the end of 2017, bringing the annual volume of supplies to 1 million tons in the period of 2018-2020," the letter said.
It was previously reported that the agreement on import oil supplies was reached during the visits of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Kazakhstan and Russia.
At the end of April 2017, Uzbekistan started construction of a new refinery in Zafarobod district of the country’s Jizzakh region, which is expected to operate using the crude imported from Kazakhstan and Russia.
The refinery has design capacity of processing of five million tons of oil per year, production of 3.7 million tons of car fuel, over 700,000 tons of aviation fuel and 300,000 tons of associated oil products.
The cost of the project is $2.2 billion. It is scheduled to complete construction of the refinery in 2022.
The Jizzakh region is located in the central part of Uzbekistan and borders Kazakhstan in the north, and this will facilitate the construction of the oil pipeline.