STAR Refining plans one of largest projects in Turkey
Through the joint venture STAR Refining Inc. established in January 2012, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (Socar) and Turcas Petroleum AS (Turcas) are developing the $5 billion Aegean Refinery project on the western coast of Turkey on the Aegean Sea.
The Socar Turcas Aegean Refinery gave the acronym STAR Project.
Socar is the national oil company of Azerbaijan and has a long standing experience in exploring, producing and refining crude oil.
Turcas is a Turkish retailer distributing transportation fuel in the country under its own brand or in joint venture with Shell.
In the Star Rafineri joint venture, Socar and Turcas share the working interests so that:
– Socar 81.5% is the operator
– Turcas 18.5%
The purpose of this Star Rafineri joint venture is to build a refinery at port of Izmir in the Aliaga region on the Aegean Coast.
This Aegean Refinery should have a capacity of 214,000 b/d of crude oil.
The main purpose of the refinery is to provide feedstock to the Petkim petrochemical complex, part of Socar‘s downstream activities and most important production unit outside Azerbaijan.
Actually Petkim imports 80% of its needs to run the Aliaga petrochemical complex.
The Aegean refinery could supply 1.66 million t/y of naphtha to the Petkim petrochemical complex and would allow Petkim to double capacity in response to the booming demand on the Turkish market.
Socar and Turcas estimated the Aegean Refinery project to $5 billion capital expenditure for which the work with they hired the financial services of Unicredit SpA to mobilize $4 billion loans.
Socar and Turcas awarded FEED and PMC contracts
In addition to supply light an heavy naphtha to the Petkim petrochemical complex, Socar and Turcas are targeting to provide the local market with ultra low sulfur diesel, liquid gas, jet fuel, benzene, and other raw petrochemical products today imported in Turkey.
The integration of the Aegean Refinery into Petkim petrochemical complex will guaranty a sustainable competitive advantage to the Turkish petrochemical industry and the transportation fuels will align Turkey on the European standards Euro5 regarding the CO2 emissions and quantity of ppm released by the transportation activity.
Socar and Turcas awarded the:
– Front end engineering and design (FEED) to Foster Wheeler Italia
– Project Management Consultancy (PMC) to Fluor
– Technology to Axens for the Naphtha Hydrotreater, Prime-K unit and Prime-D unit licenses.
The Aegean Refinery project should include:
– Crude Distillation unit
– Vacuum Distillation unit
– 20,000 barrel per stream day (bpsd) Naphtha Hydrotreating unit
– 40,000 bpsd Delayed Coking unit
– 66,000 bpsd Hydrocracking unit
– 26,000 bpsd Prime-K (Kerosene Hydrotreater)
– 68,000 bspd Prime-D (Diesel Hydrotreater at 10 ppm sulfur)
– LPG Caustic tratement unit
– 28,000 (bpsd) Continuous Catalytic Reformer (CCR)
– Saturated gas unit
– Amine and sour water stripper
– Sulfur and tail gas treatment unit
– 160,000 m3/h Hydrogen unit
After Technip Italy having performed the feasibility study, Foster Wheeler completed the FEED.
According to the on going financial negotiations, Socar and Turcas expect the financing of the $5 billion capital expenditure to be completed at the end of 2012, to organize the call for tender of the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) packages on first half 2013 so that the Aegean Refinery, or STAR Project, could commence commercial operations in 2016-2017.
