Tag Archives: refining

Uzbekneftegaz to launch gas-to-liquid plant this year

JUNE 11 2021 (The Bulletin) — Uzbekneftegaz said that it would launch its first gas-to-liquids plant in Q4 2021. Opening the plant in the south of the country will reduce Uzbekistan’s reliance on imports of diesel and jet fuel. Uzbekneftegaz has been building the $3.6b plant since 2019. It was supposed to start operations in 2020 but the coronavirus pandemic and strikes over pay and conditions have delayed the construction.

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— This story was published in issue 48 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on June 16 2021

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Italian company wins Heydar Aliyev refinery update project

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FEB. 3 2021 (The Bulletin) — Italian engineering company Maire Tecnimont said that it had won a tender in Azerbaijan to modernise part of the Heydar Aliyev oil refinery outside Baku. It said that the new project is worth $160m and will take up to three years to complete. Azerbaijan, like its neighbours, is investing in power generation and refining capabilities, creating opportunities for Western contractors.

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— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

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Uzbek refinery workers protest over job threat

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JAN. 19 2021 (The Bulletin) — Workers at the Altyaryk oil refining plant in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley have been striking and staging sit-ins since Jan. 10 because of what they say are planned job cuts, media reported. The refinery management has said that it is modernising the plant to upgrade it to Euro-5 standard fuel production and that jobs will be preserved. Workers, though, told the Eurasianet website that there hasn’t been any fuel production since July and that 2,000 jobs will be lost.

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— This story was first published in issue 469 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Fuel prices rising in Tajikistan

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JAN. 18 2021 (The Bulletin) — Fuel prices are rising in Tajikistan, media reported by quoting local taxi drivers who said that there had been a 10% increase in the past week. Analysts said that the fuel price increase is linked to a drop in imports of fuel from Russia and Kazakhstan. Tajikistan does not have its own oil refinery and is reliant on imports.

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— This story was first published in issue 469 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Power failure causes blockouts and fuel shortages in Central Asia

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ALMATY/JAN. 5 2021 (The Bulletin) — A failure in the system that transmits electricity around Central Asia triggered the shut down of several power stations, causing blackouts across the region and fuel shortages in Uzbekistan (Jan. 5).

The breakdown of transmission lines also highlighted the fragility of the electricity transmission network, dubbed the United Energy System

Analysts said that a surge in power use in Uzbekistan was probably to blame for the breakdown of transmission lines. This triggered blackouts in Almaty, Bishkek and several regions in Uzbekistan because emergency systems automatically shut down several power stations.

Uzbek officials also said the blackouts caused a production drop at the Mubarek Gas Processing plant, in the south of the country. Drivers in Uzbekistan use gas to fuel their cars and restrictions were announced.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Romania drops fraud investigation into Kazmunaigas

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DEC. 11 2019 (The Bulletin) — Prosecutors in Romania told the AFP news agency that they had dropped an investigation into potential tax fraud by Kazakh state oil and gas company Kazmunaigas linked to its purchase of the oil refinery Petromidia from Rompetrol in 2007. In 2016, Romanian investigators briefly seized control of the refinery before Kazmunaigas threatened international arbitration.
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— This story was first published in issue 432 of the weekly Bulletin on Dec. 27 2019

Uzbekistan starts building oil refinery

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APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan started construction of a $2.2b oil refinery near the border with Kazakhstan, a project that will boost jobs and should also plug a yawning fuel supply gap.

The Jizzakh refinery will be Uzbekistan’s fourth and will produce more than 3.7m tonnes of gasoline, more than 700,000 tonnes of jet fuel and about 300,000 tonnes of other oil products annually, according to officials.

It will receive unrefined oil through a yet-to-be-built pipeline from Kazakhstan, helping to cement improving bilateral relations.

The refinery is the most high- profile project initiated under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Uzbek leader since September last year. He has made boosting jobs and improving bilateral relations with Uzbekistan’s neighbours his core policy initiatives.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Refined oil exports drop in Azerbaijan

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APRIL 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s exports of refined oil products fell by 18.3% in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the year before to 286,000 tonnes, media reported quoting state- owned SOCAR. SOCAR didn’t give a reason for the drop but oil sales and refined oil products are a vital part of Azerbaijan’s economy and foreign earning power. Azerbaijan, like the rest of the region, is trying to recover from an economic slump.

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Kazakh energy company confirms deal with China’s CEFC to sell refinery

ALMATY, DEC. 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shrugging off a Romanian investigation into the privatisation in 2003 of its main refinery asset, KMG International, the Black Sea orientated subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy producer Kazmunaigas, reaffirmed its commitment to sell a 51% stake in the company for $680m to China’s CEFC.

If the deal, first put together in May, does go ahead it will be a relief to the Kazakh government which has been trying to raise much needed cash to see it through a steep economic downturn linked to a sharp drop in oil prices.

For China, the 51% stake in KMG International would give it control over the Petromida refinery on Romania’s Black Sea coast near Constanta, which has a refining capacity of 5m tonnes of oil a year. The company also controls hundreds of petrol stations across Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Georgia through the Rompetrol brand.

KMG International’s CEO, Zhanat Tussupbekov, said the financial backing of CEFC would allow the company to expand.

“The strategy of KMG International with its new major shareholder aims at developing major projects, Romania being the business priority,” he said.

“We plan to increase the refining capacity to 10m tonnes of crude per year, to build up to 200 new fuelling points, to develop industrial services in upstream and downstream areas, as well as to build a co-generation plant on Petromidia platform.”

Importantly, though, the deal still needs regulatory approval from the EU, Romania and China.

The original deal for the sale had stalled because of a Romanian investigation into the purchase of Rompetrol, which owned the Petromida refinery, by Dinu Patriciu in 2003 for $760m. He sold the refinery four years later for $1.6 to Kazmunaigas. Patriciu died in 2014. The investigation into the deal doesn’t appear to be concluded.

Kazmunaigas International owns 55% of the company that owns the Petromida refinery. The Romanian government owns the other 45% of Petromida.

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(News report from Issue No. 310, published on Dec. 23 2016)

Turkmenistan to modernise oil refineries

NOV. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ordered his government to modernise the country’s oil refineries so that it could boost its output of refined oil to 20m tonnes by 2020, 22m tonnes by 2022 and 25m tonnes by 2025, media reported. The Central Asia region in general has been suffering from a shortage of refinery capacity.

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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)