BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 26
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
The priority of STAR Refinery of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR in Turkey is to ensure naphtha production, Murat LeCompte, Chief External Affairs Officer at SOCAR Turkey told Trend.
He noted that STAR Refinery, which fully meets Petkim’s naphtha demand, started 2020 quite well.
However, with the outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide, some changes in the production plans in this period came up, added LeCompte.
“The demand for jet fuel went down rapidly, as the aviation and logistics industry was affected by the pandemic. Thanks to its advanced technology and operational flexibility, STAR Refinery continued production by converting 1.6 million tons of jet fuel production capacity to diesel. STAR Refinery’s priority is to ensure naphtha production, which is the main raw material of Petkim and meet Turkey’s domestic demand. Therefore, export has low preference for us. Meeting the domestic demand was a priority for us also during the period from January through May,” he explained.
LeCompte pointed out that STAR Refinery with investment value of $6.3 billion, meets 25 percent of Turkey’s demand for refined petroleum products alone. Its refining capacity is 10 million tons of crude oil per year, he added.
“STAR Refinery produced 3.6 million tons of diesel, 1.2 million tons of jet fuel, approximately 800,000 tons of naphtha, 200,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), 600,000 tons of reformat and 400,000 tons of petrocoke as of the end of 2019. The volume of crude oil refined at STAR Refinery in 2019 reached 7.1 million tons. The start of domestic sales by STAR Refinery in 2019 contributed to around $2 billion worth of import cuts to Turkey,” noted Murat LeCompte.
The opening ceremony of the Star oil refinery took place on October 19, 2018 in Izmir, Turkey.
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