Page 10 - DMEA Week 40

DMEA reFininG DMEA
Lavan refinery raises standards amid Iranian downstream push
miDDle eAst
tHE CEO of Iran’s Lavan Oil Re ning Co. said this week that the facility had begun produc- ing 91-octane gasoline to comply with the EU’s Euro-5 standards.
speaking to Mehr news Agency, Mohammad Ali Akhbari said that the move had “promoted and improved quality of increasing pro tability, increasing the octane of gasoline and reducing environmental pollutants.”
He added that the plan for process improve- ment and production optimisation at Lavan includes projects to construct a distillation unit, a hydrogen purification unit, a light naphtha isomerisation unit, a sulphur recycling unit, and others.
e rst stage of this plan was implemented in 2011, increasing Lavan’s capacity from 30,000 barrels per day to 50,000 bpd. Akhbari added: “Currently, the [Lavan] re nery produces 55,000 bpd.”
e planned overhaul of Iran’s downstream sector is resulting in wider improvements to re ning practices. In July, Iran’s Financial trib- une highlighted improvements made by the 25,000-bpd kermanshah refinery to reduce pollution.
the English language daily reported that the facility had replaced furnace burners, con- structed a vacuum distillation unit (VDU), and also carried out studies on the “construc- tion of quality units and production capacity development”.
secretary-general of the Oil Re ning Indus- try Cooperative Association (ORICA), nasser
Ashouri was quoted as saying that the construc- tion and installation of the new production units would cost around Us$300m.
kermanshah is expected to produce higher quality, cleaner fuels, with Ashouri noting “high-octane gasoline, low sulphur fuel oil and gas oil with [a sulphur content] below 50 parts per million.
e facility currently has a production slate of 100,000 litres per day (lpd) of LPG, 750,000 lpd of gasoline, 437,000 lpd of kerosene and 750,000 lpd of fuel oil. e re nery was one of several that were chosen to process crude trucked over the border from the kurdistan Region of northern Iraq in mid-2018.
Meanwhile, work is being carried out to upgrade the 9th south Pars re nery catering to output from Phase 12 of the o shore project.
imo regs
It is not all good news for Iranian refining though. this week, state media outlet ILnA quoted Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Prod- ucts Exporters’ Association (OPEX) spokesman Hamid Hosseini as saying that Iranian facilities are struggling to comply with the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) new 0.5% global sulphur cap regulation for marine fuels.
He said that while Iranian re neries are try- ing their best to lower sulphur content in mazut, “decreasing current sulphur level of 3.5% to 0.5% by January 2020 is a daunting task.”
“Most re neries need to upgrade machinery and equipment,” he added.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 40 10•October•2019