Kazakhstan prime minister calls to speed up construction of Atyrau Oil Refinery's own power plant

ASTANA. July 5 (Interfax) - Kazakh Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov has called for speeding up the construction of the power plant at the Atyrau Oil Refinery, which was forced to suspend operations on July 3 due to an accident in the Kazakh energy system, the government's press service said.

"The plant is a site of strategic importance, and should not be dependent on an external supply of electricity. That is, in the event of an emergency shutdown, your own substation should take over to ensure the stable operation of the enterprise. This project should not be stretched until 2028, and implement it in the next 2-3 years. We need to accelerate this process," Smailov said, as cited by the press service report.

The project for the construction of a gas turbine power plant for the refinery is currently under development, Murat Dosmuratov, General Director of the refinery, said.

"The refinery ships about 5,000 tonnes of gasoline and 6,000 tonnes of diesel fuel daily. Now the shipment is from accumulated stocks. In total, today there are 22,000 tonnes of gasoline, 26,000 tonnes of diesel fuel and 5,000 tonnes of jet fuel. We have sufficient stocks of oil products to totally fulfill the shipment plan until the plant reaches full capacity," Dosmuratov said, as quoted in the report.