Page 7 - LatAmOil Week 19 2022

LatAmOil NICARAGUA LatAmOil

Owji (second from left) met with Nicaraguan officials on May 5 (Photo: Diario Barricado)
He made the announcement following a meet- Centeno added that a fourth phase is under
ing with Nicaragua’s Minister of Energy and evaluation, which would comprise a fuel storage
Mines, Salvador Mansell, and the Minister for and distribution plant on Nicaragua’s Caribbean
Production and Trade, Francisco López, at coast and a pipeline connecting it with Miramar.
CIESSB’s Miramar fuel distribution plant. Owji said that the full project would cost a
According to Managua, the CIESSB refinery total of $6.6bn. Noting that “the government of
will have a crude processing capacity of 150,000 President [Ebrahim] Raisi sees Nicaragua as a
barrels per day (bpd), 50,000 bpd of which strategic partner in the world”, he said Iranian
will be consumed locally, with the remainder experts would analyse the project and “God
available for export to other Central American willing, […] will start this important work soon.”
countries. “We are committed to participating in this
The facility’s process co-ordinator Marco important investment, given our long experi-
Centeno said: “Originally designed to process ence in this type of construction and refinery,”
crude oil from the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela; it the Iranian minister told Nicaraguan official
is a refinery with a deep conversion configura- media.
tion and the refinery will be capable of produc-
ing LPG, naphtha, gasoline, Jet-A1, diesel, fuel Invitation to Brazil
oil no.6, coke and sulphur and has the capacity While Owji was doing the rounds, the CEO of
to distribute to the national and Central Ameri- Iran’s Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Co.
can market,” Centeno said. (PGPIC) made overtures to Brazilian firms to
It comprises three phases. The first is a fuel invest in the Islamic Republic’s petchem sector.
storage and distribution plant – in which invest- Speaking to Iranian state media, Abdolali Ali
ment has so far amounted to $432mn – capable Askari said: “PGPIC has 14 projects under con-
of receiving LPG, super gasoline, regular gaso- struction with a domestic return price of at least
line, diesel and fuel oil. 15%, which is a good opportunity for foreign
The $3.64bn second stage focuses on the investment, and in this regard we welcome the
development of 100,000 bpd of refining capac- investment of Brazilian companies.”
ity, which will be expanded during phase 3 to He noted that PGPIC is the largest company
150,000 bpd alongside the integration of pet- in Iran’s capital market and has invested around
rochemical facilities to produce olefins and $26bn across various projects over the past 20
polymers. years. ™

VENEZUEL A
PdVSA now importing Iranian heavy crude

VENEZUELA has begun importing heavy earlier this week.
crude oil from Iran in order to make more feed- The shipments are taking place within the
stock available to domestic refineries, according framework of a new trade pact struck between
to documents from the national oil company Tehran and Caracas, Mehr News Agency
(NOC) PdVSA that were viewed by Reuters reported on May 10.

Week 19 12•May•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P7