ASTANA, Kazakhstan, August 14. Caspi Bitum, an oil refinery in Kazakhstan's Aktau, plans to produce 393,000 tons of bitumen in 2023, Trend reports.
However, as Chairman of Kazakhstan's KazMunayGas (KMG) national oil company Magzum Mirzagaliyev noted, due to irregular orders from road construction companies in the first 7 months of the current year, the plant produced 50,000 tons less than over the same period last year.
Mirzagaliyev also pointed out that the production potential of the facility is not fully utilized. One of the main reasons is the lack of year-round financing for road construction, causing road companies to actively avoid applying for bitumen not only in winter, but also in spring.
"Due to the seasonal demand for the product in the autumn-winter-spring periods, it is necessary to promote the direction of packaged bitumen in 'big bags', which are convenient for transportation and storage. The product maintains high quality as it eliminates the need for constant heating. The company already has positive experience with this. Caspi Bitum, considering the production capacity of packaged bitumen (36,000 tons per month) and technical limitations, has no issues with producing packaged bitumen. In this case, resources are only needed to fulfill orders and supply big bags," noted Mirzagaliyev.
Meanwhile, the demand for road bitumen in Kazakhstan increases annually. To meet the growing domestic market demand, the plan is to expand the plant's processing capacity to 1.5 million tons of oil per year. This will allow the production of road bitumen at the facility to reach 750,000 tons per year.
Currently, preliminary technical and economic assessment has been conducted in collaboration with Chinese partners - Nanjing Project Design & Research Institute of Petrochemicals (NJPEC). Under the agreement with NJPEC, the "Technical Audit with the issuance of techno-economic calculations for increasing the oil processing capacity to 1.5 million tons per year through staged modernization of the existing production" has begun. The start of commissioning is scheduled for August 2024.
