Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept.23
Trend:
Until the end of this year, the State Committee on Standardization, Metrology and Patents of Azerbaijan will receive about 100 standards for a new complex on oil and gas processing and petrochemical production (OGPC), which will be built by SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) in Azerbaijan, the State Committee told Trend Sept.23.
Standards, which are planned to be applied during the construction and commissioning of the new complex, are being prepared on the basis of the agreement signed between the Azerbaijan Institute of Standardization and Certification at the State Committee and SOCAR. Period of implementation of the first phase of the project is 2 years. The total duration of the project is 8 years.
Work within the framework of this project continues and about 1,000 new standards in total will be prepared and adopted on the basis of the contract, the committee said.
"The new standards relate both to the production processes and products to be produced by the complex," the committee noted.
Specialists of the Institute of Standardization and Certification will examine the relevance of international and regional standards during construction and commissioning of the new complex within the framework of the contract, and compliance of the standards' drafts translated into Azerbaijani language with the system of linguistic, orthographic and state standards will be examined.
OGPC will be located 60 kilometers from Baku and will consist of three processing enterprises and a thermal power plant (TPP).
The implementation of the OGPC project will improve the quality of production, increase the country's export potential and promote the environmental protection in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
The annual capacity of OGPC's oil refinery will be 8.5-9 million metric tons, gas processing plant -12 billion cubic meters, petrochemical production - over one million metric tons (the capacities of the polyethylene and polypropylene production facilities will be 800,000 metric tons and 300,000 metric tons, respectively).
The cost of the project for construction of the OGPC is estimated at $14.4 billion taking into account the interest payments on loans.
Some $6.1 billion of the total volume of project expenditures will fall to the oil refinery, $3.6 billion - gas processing plant and power generating unit, $2.6 billion - petrochemical complex and the remaining $2.1 billion will fall to the payments on loans.
It is planned to implement some 30-40 percent of the project with the equity, and the remaining part of the work will be carried out by using borrowed capital. The payback period of the project will last 4.5 years. The entire project will be completed in 8 years.
Oil products are produced at two Baku oil refineries with a total capacity of 16 million metric tons of oil per year. Both oil refineries belong to SOCAR, which annually processes approximately seven million metric tons of oil, extracted from onshore and offshore fields with SOCAR's own funds.
