BAKU, Azerbaijan, Mar. 7
By Ilkin Seyfaddini - Trend:
Uzbekistan plans to modernize the country's largest oil refineries by 2022 in three phases, Trend reports via Uzbek media.
Uzbekistan currently has three major refineries - Bukhara, Fergana and Altyarik. However, due to the drop in oil production and obsolete equipment, the capacity of the enterprises is no more than 30 percent.
In December 2017, the construction of the Jizzakh Refinery, which cost $2.2 billion and has a capacity of 5 million tons of oil, was started. Its construction was planned to be completed by 2021. However, in December 2018 the project was frozen, and Uzbekistan announced the revision of the concept to increase capacity through modernization of existing refineries.
In particular, it is planned to modernize Ferghana and Altyarik refineries worth $875 million by 2022 in three phases in partnership with American Honeywell UOP, French Axens and Danish Haldor Topsoe.
Starting from 2020, it was planned to produce high-quality diesel fuel meeting the Euro-4 and Euro-5 standards.
The modernization of the Bukhara Refinery worth $533 million is also planned to be carried out in three stages, but by 2025 in partnership with South Korean SK Engineering. After that the refinery will be able to process 2.5 million tons of oil and gas condensate per year. The refinery capacity will be 1.2 million tons per year of Euro-5 gasoline, 200,000 tons per year of aviation kerosene and 750,000 tons per year of diesel fuel.
From 1 April 2020, Uzbekistan will increase the excise tax rates for fuel produced in the country and sold to end consumers by almost 23 percent. This is provided for in the State Budget Act for 2020.
In particular, the excise tax on motor gasoline, diesel fuel and liquefied gas sold through gas stations to end users will increase from 285 soum per liter effective October 1, 2019 to 350 soum ($0.0367) per liter effective April 1, 2020.
In other cases, excise duty rates on sales of the above products to end users per ton, including gasoline - from 378,480 soum to 465,530 soum ($48.86), diesel fuel - from 346,275 soum to 425,918 soum ($44.70), liquefied gas - from 540,645 soum to 664,993 soum ($69.79).
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