Lukoil to invest 8 bln rubles to modernize Stavrolen
BUDYONNOVSK. Sept 12 (Interfax) - Lukoil is examining the issue of expanding and modernizing polyethylene production at the Stavrolen plant, First Vice President Vladimir Nekrasov told journalists.
The project will cost an estimated 8 billion rubles.
"Lukoil is also taking a serious look at developing gas chemicals, that is, these will be optional projects, but ones that make sense: fertilizers, methanol, acetic acid, ammonia, and urea. These are just plans for now, but I think they will become realities," he said.
"We have still other projects that depend on geological exploration of the Caspian Sea shelf, notably the field named after Kuvykin where, after drilling exploration wells, we expect to produce a significant amount of gas. There is a gas pipeline with capacity for 6 billion cubic meters a year running to Budyonnovsk from the Caspian. We have built a gas processing plant to refine that petroleum gas and are processing it already at power plants, but this is not sufficient yet. For now we are producing and transporting about 1.5 billion cubic meters to Stavrolen. We are expecting large volumes and after geological exploration, we plan to build a second stage of the gas processing plant in Stavropol," Nekrasov said.
Stavrolen is Russia's second biggest producer of low-pressure polyethylene after Kazanorgsintez and the third biggest polypropylene producer after Nizhnekamskneftekhim and Tomskneftekhim.
Lukoil plans to build a gas chemical complex on the basis of Stavrolen by 2020, to refine gas from fields in the Northern Caspian into ethylene, polyethylene and polypropylene.
The first stage, completed in 2015, saw construction of a gas processing plant with capacity for 2 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas a year and modernization of the ethylene production unit. Construction of the second stage with capacity to process 4 bcm a year, construction of an ethane pyrolysis unit with capacity for up to 225,000 tonnes of ethylene a year and installation of a polyethylene unit with capacity for 255,000 tonnes a year is planned before 2017. By 2020, ethylene and polyethylene capacity will both increase to 600,000 tonnes a year. In addition, construction of the third stage will see addition of a unit to produce polypropylene with capacity for up to 200,000 tonnes a year and construction of a complex for refining gas into chemical products.