In 2018 SOCAR to put into operation new bitumen installation on oil refinery
In mid-2018 SOCAR plans to put into operation a new bitumen installation at the Baku-based oil refinery named after Heydar Aliyev, the company reported.
Yesterday SOCAR signed the contract to implement the project with the Austrian Porner GmbH company. The details of the contract are not available.
During the signing ceremony SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev said that as a part of the oil refinery reconstruction and upgrade project, it is planned to increase annual capacity of oil refining within a short period of time and start production of high quality oil products up to Euro 5 standard.
He reminded that for this purpose the installation of primary oil refining, catalytic reforming and catalytic cracking will be upgraded and several new installations will be built.
“As a part of these works the new bitumen installation will be put into operation in mid-2018. This will allow putting out of operation the infrastructure on Azerneftyag oil refinery, optimizing the operation costs of the Baku oil refinery, establishing production of high quality bitumen and improving ecology of Baku city,” said the same source.
Tofig Gakhramanov, SOCAR Vice President for Strategic Development, said that Porner GmbH will work out the project of construction of the bitumen installation at the Baku oil refinery.
He also said that three agreements must be signed with the Austrian company – license and guarantee agreements and the installation design agreement.
Porner GmbH will start basic engineering of the project in the near future. Capacity of the installation will be 400,000 tons of bitumen a year.
US Fluor Limited company is the contractor and operator of construction of the new bitumen installation at the Baku oil refinery.
It was reported earlier quoting SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev that construction of the new bitumen installation at the Baku oil refinery will begin till the end of 2015. Till that time bitumen production in Azerbaijan will be continued at the bitumen installation in Azerneftyag. As soon as the new bitumen installation is put into operation, the existing installation with the capacity of 250,000 tons of bitumen a year will be dismantled.—0—
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