BAKU

Azerbaijan’s State energy firm SOCAR plans to boost the annual capacity of its Turkey Aegean Refinery (STAR) in Turkey to 11.5 million tonnes in three years, a SOCAR Turkey senior official said.

The 200,000-barrel-per-day STAR refinery controlled by SOCAR was launched in 2018. The facility on Turkey’s Aegean coast processed 10.5 million tonnes of oil in 2020.

“The capacity of the STAR refinery has reached around 11 million tonnes of oil this year … Turkey is allowed to have refining capacities of no more than 13 million tonnes per year and SOCAR has sent an application for this volume, which can be reached in the future, if it is deemed appropriate,” Anar Mammadov said.

Mammadov said that it was planned to stop the refinery for repair work to eliminate bottlenecks and replace some equipment in 2022.

“With the completion of these works after 2024, the plant’s capacity will just increase by 15 percent of the original capacity, which was 10 million tonnes per year when the plant was launched in 2018,” he said.

The STAR refinery was initially designed to process up to 28 grades of oil. The $6.3 billion refinery processes Azeri Light, Kerkuk, Urals grades of oil as well as crude from Kazakhstan, Norway, Morocco and Tunisia. Last year, STAR reduced its purchases of Russia’s Urals oil. The decision followed a sharp fall in Russia’s seaborne oil exports from Western ports, traders said.

STAR Refinery produces 1.6-1.7 million tonnes of naphtha, 1.6 million tonnes of jet fuel, 4.8 million tonnes of very low sulfur diesel fuel, 700,000 tonnes of petroleum coke, 420,000 tonnes of mixed xylene, 480,000 tonnes of reformate and 160,000 tonnes of sulfur per year.

At present, the refinery provides 20-25 percent of Turkey’s needs for basic types of petroleum products. The refinery’s activities made it possible to provide the Petkim petrochemical complex with raw materials and created conditions for SOCAR to enter the Mediterranean market with its diesel fuel and jet fuel, as well as raw materials for the chemical industry.

The facility supplies feedstock to Petkim to help cut Turkey’s dependence on imports of refined oil products. It is designed to boost the country’s refining capacity by 25-30 percent.

In Azerbaijan, SOCAR owns and manages the Baku Oil Refinery, which produces 15 different petroleum products, including gasoline, aviation kerosene, diesel fuel, naphta, petroleum coke, and others. The country’s sole refinery meets the nation’s entire demand for petroleum products and exports 45 percent of its petroleum products.

Earlier this year, SOCAR and Petkim agreed to defer the last payment for Petkim’s stake in STAR.

SOCAR’s subsidiary in Turkey, SOCAR Turkey Enerji A.S. (STEAS), and Petkim agreed that payment of the last of three $240 million instalments for an 18-percent stake in STAR will be deferred to January 3, 2022. It was initially supposed to be made in June this year.

In 2018, Petkim signed an agreement with SOCAR Turkey to buy out the stake in the STAR refinery, Turkey’s third-largest oil refinery. Petkim said the payment was postponed “due to the pandemic and market conditions”.

SOCAR’s total investment in the Turkish fuel and energy complex has reached $19.5 billion.