Iran’s refinery projects to go online in 2010
30 Dec 2008
Iran, the world's fourth-largest crude oil producer, has ambitious plans to improve its refining capacity to meet its internal requirements in the event of sanctions being imposed on it.
The country is making an investment of $23.22 billion to build seven refineries and related plants in the country. Iran has a daily crude poduction capacity of over 4 million barrels and plan to raise it to 5.3 mbpd in the next seven years.
Its 360,000-bpd condensate refinery in the port city of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran, being built by its Persian Gulf Star, a joint venture between Star Petrogas Corporation and a number of companies run by the Iranian oil ministry, is scheduled for completion in the second half of 2010, though the secondary refining units will be ready in 2009.
It will use gas condesates, likely from its own South Pars fields, which will be supplied by state-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). NIOC says 100 oil projects would be operational by March 2009.
When completed this project will help catapult Bandar Abbas to the largest oil refining region in the Middle East with a capacity of one million barrels of crude oil per day.
The $2.5-billion refinery will produce high-level value-added products and nearly two-thirds of its capacity will be used to refine 251,000 bpd into 40 million litres of petrol. The rest of the capacity will be used to produce 20 million litres of middle distillates like liquid gases, kerosene, and diesel fuel daily to meet internal requirements as lack of refining capacity has propelled the fourth-largest oil exporter to the world's second largest fuel importer.
The constant threat of sanctions by the West against its ambitious nuclear programme, led to the country investing developing its own refining capacity, for which it has been receiving Chinese technical assistnce.
Iran also plans a $1.2-billion expansion project to double the capacity of its 110,000-bpd Tabriz refinery.
ONGC is involvedin the development of Iran's Farsi oil field.
