Major oil producer Kazakhstan plans to commission a new refinery by 2033 to eliminate domestic fuel shortages and become a net fuel exporter, The Caspian Post reports, citing Vice Minister of Energy, Kaiyrkhan Tutkyshbayev.
The new refinery, which will be Kazakhstan’s fourth, will have a processing capacity of 10 million tons of crude oil per year.
Work on the planning and feasibility studies has started, the energy official was quoted as saying.
Earlier this month, Tutkyshbayev said that the central region of Ulytau is being considered as a location to host the new refinery.
Last week, Kazakhstan’s Ambassador to Kuwait, Yerzhan Yelekeyev, said at a meeting with Kuwait’s Oil Minister Tariq Al-Roumi that Kuwait could find investment opportunities in Kazakhstan’s oil refining sector, including the construction of the fourth oil refinery currently under consideration.
Kazakhstan plans to build a new large refinery and boost existing refining capacity to more than double its crude processing capacity by 2040, Energy Minister Yerlan Akenzhenov said at the end of last year.
In 2024, the refining processing rate of the OPEC+ oil producer was 18 million tons per year. Expansion of existing capacity will boost the oil refining volumes between 2025 and 2032, from the current 18 million tons per year to 30 million tons per year, the minister said.
Then, by 2040, Kazakhstan plans to launch a new large-scale refinery with a capacity of 10 million tons per year.
All these expansions are set to more than double oil refining capacity to 40 million tons annually by 2040 from 18 million tons per year now.
With the capacity expansion comes the target to double petroleum product output to 29.2 million tons by 2040, up from 14.55 million tons expected for the current year.
Earlier this year, Talgat Makuov, deputy director of the energy ministry’s oil transportation and refining department, said that Kazakhstan’s goal to more than double its refining capacity would need investments of between $15 billion and $19 billion.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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