Rompetrol re-commissions six units at Petromidia Refinery
ALMATY. Nov 30 (Interfax) - The Rompetrol Group, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan's KazMunayGas - Processing and Marketing,has re-commissioned the processing units at Petromidia Refinery after repairs.
"The Rompetrol Group has completed the scheduled turnaround and returned into service the processing units at Petromidia Refinery and put into operation six new units, thus increasing the capacity of the refinery up to 5 million tonnes of feedstock," KazMunayGas says in a press release on Wednesday.
In early November KazMunayGas said that Romania's Rompetrol Rafinare (part of the Rompetrol Group, owned by Kazakh National Company KazMunayGas) within the Petromidia Refinery modernization project commissioned six new units out of nine.
The company put in operation the catalytic cracking unit, Claus gas desulphurization, amine unit, new flare system and the air separation unit. It also converted the hydrofining unit for vacuum gas into a hydrofining unit for diesel fuel.
The modernization project's 2010-2011 investment program will be fully accomplished in Q1 2012 after installation of three more new units: the mild hydrogen cracking unit, the hydrogen plant, and a sulphur recovery unit).
The total cost of the project that was launched in 2006 is $367 million.
After modernization the Petromidia refinery will increase its annual processing capacity from 3.7 million tonnes to 5 million tonnes, refining Urals crude only.
"The project will introduce the company to the top 25 refineries in South and Eastern Europe. Upon completion of this project the Petromidia refinery will fully switch over to Kazakh oil maintaining Euro 5 standard quality," said the Rompetrol Group Vice-President of Business Development Gavitv Kurkimov.
Modernization of the refinery Petromidia is part of the KazMunayGas strategy to expand its presence in Central and Eastern Europe, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia, which has Rompetrol gas stations, as well as in Turkey, Serbia and Greece.
This year, the Rompetrol Group planned to process 4.17 million tonnes of feedstock, including 3.94 million tonnes of crude oil and invest $216 million, of which $180 million will go to expand Petromidia refining capacity.
The Rompetrol Group, a large oil and gas company in Rumania, is wholly owned by JSC KazMunayGas Processing and Marketing The company has three refineries - Petromedia, Vega and Rompetrol Petrochemicals - and 1,042 filling stations in Romania, France, Spain, Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Georgia. The company owns a 25 percent share of the petroleum product retail sales market in Romania, a 3.5 percent share of the market in France, and a 1.5-percent stake of the market in Spain. Rompetrol works in 13 countries in service and trading.
