Kazakhstan signed a $1.7 billion contract with Chinese and Japanese companies on Thursday to upgrade Atyrau, the oldest refinery in the country, to produce cleaner fuels, the refinery said in a statement. Central Asia's largest economy and the second biggest oil producer in the former Soviet Union after Russia, Kazakhstan approved a refinery modernisation programme worth $4 billion in 2004.
It aims to upgrade the country's three oil refineries and supply the domestic market with all kinds of oil products by the end of 2014. Atyrau's deep refining facility will be built jointly by China's Sinopec Engineering, Japan's Marubeni Corp and Kazakh firm Kazstroiservice.
The project, aimed to boost the depth of refining to 85 percent, is to be completed in 41 months, the refinery said. The refinery said Sinopec Engineering would oversee the general implementation of the project, while Marubeni Corp would secure financing from the Japan Bank for International Co-operation and tackle logistics issues. Kazstroiservice would deal with construction and supplies, it said.
The refinery, located in Kazakhstan's oil industry hub of Atyrau in western Kazakhstan, is part of Kazakh state oil and gas firm KazMunaiGas. Construction of the refinery is the last stage of Atyrau's upgrade. The deep refining facility is designed to process 2.4 million tonnes of crude annually. The modernisation of Atyrau would allow it to become in 2016 the first Kazakh producer of motor fuel corresponding to Europe's Euro-5 emission standards.
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