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their long-term passenger target set at 200mn annually. Tupras is owned by Koc Group, Turkey’s largest conglomerate. Some 49% of shares in the refiner are traded on the stock exchange. Shares in Tupras jumped as much as 3.9% to trade at TRY312 on April 16. According to a presentation on the Tupras website, jet fuel production accounted for 19% of Tupras’ overall output last year. It sold 4.9mn tonnes of jet fuel in 2018, a 7.4% increase on the previous year. The company forecast in an April investor presentation that its jet fuel production would amount to 5.2mn tonnes this year whereas it is estimated that the production of its main competitor, STAR Refinery, owned by Azerbaijani national oil company Socar, will be 1.6mn tonnes.
● Socar
Azerbaijani Socar’s STAR refinery in Turkey targets full capacity in May.
Azerbaijan’s state-owned SOCAR plans to reach full oil refining capacity of 200,000 barrels per day at its recently launched Turkish STAR plant in May, three industry sources told Reuters. Refining at STAR is adding to shortages of Russian Urals crude in southern Europe. The $6bn STAR refinery has an annual crude oil processing capacity of 10mn tonnes. It was constructed as a result of the largest single investment made by a private company in Turkey. It is to produce petroleum products such as petrochemical feedstocks naphtha and xylene, as well as diesel, jet fuel and LPG. STAR supplies feedstock to petrochemical producer Petkim, another Socar-controlled company, located adjacent to the refinery on the Aliaga peninsula, near Izmir on Turkey’s Aegean Sea coast. The stakeholders of the STAR Refinery project are Socar (60%) and the Ministry of Economy of the Azerbaijan Republic (40%). STAR can process Russia’s flagship Urals blend, Iraqi Kirkuk and similar oil grades but has only bought Russian crude so far, according to industry sources and Refinitiv Eikon data. “STAR is working in a test mode so far, in April we will supply it with the same amount of oil as in March,” a source at SOCAR Turkey told Reuters. “Yet in May, the plant will start processing oil at its full capacity,” they added. According to data from Refinitiv Eikon and trading sources, STAR processed around 700,000 tonnes of oil, or 166,000 barrels per day, in March. A second source, familiar with the plant’s plans, confirmed STAR is due to process 200,000 bpd next month. The SOCAR Turkey source said STAR planned to continue processing solely Urals in the coming months. This means that STAR alone will consume almost one-half of the Urals grade offered in the Mediterranean, Reuters calculations showed.
BP and Azerbaijan’s Socar plan construction start for $1.8bn petrochemical plant in Turkey at end of 2020. BP and Azerbaijani national oil company Socar plan to start construction of a $1.8bn petrochemical plant in Turkey at the end of 2020, according to Socar’s Turkey Enerjji project director. “A tender for the design of the complex has been announced and three companies are taking part in it ... Results will be announced next month,” Emil Alkhasly told Reuters, adding that it was expected that construction would be completed by 2023. BP and Socar signed an agreement for the construction of the plant in 2018 following the completion of the latter’s STAR refinery, on the Aliaga peninsula, near Izmir on Turkey’s Aegean coast, late in the year. The refinery is designed to provide raw materials for petrochemical plants, including installations of Socar-controlled and largest Turkish petrochemical producer Petkim. Petkim’s plants are located a short distance from STAR, as will be the facility planned by Socar and BP. Officials would like to see the emergence of an extensive zone boasting multiple petrochemical ventures in Aliaga. The Socar-BP installation will have a design capacity of 1.25mn tonnes/yr of purified terephthalic acid (PTA), 840,000 tonnes of paraxylene and 340,000 tonnes of benzene. Separately, officials behind the only oil refinery in Azerbaijan, which is owned by Socar, said they plan to keep its volumes of processed oil at around 6.1mn tonnes in 2019, the same as last year.
102 TURKEY Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com