Tecnicas Reunidas awarded Turkish Aliaga’s $1 billion contract

SOCAR Turkey Enerji A.Ş. has awarded to the consortium under the leadership of Tecnicas Reunidas (TR) (incorporating Saipem from Italy, GS Engineering & Construction from South Korea, and Itochu from Japan) a contract for the engineering, procurement of all equipment and materials, construction and commissioning of the facilities for the SOCAR Turkey Aegean Refinery (STAR) in Aliaga, Turkey. The global amount of the contract is around 3,500 million US dollars.

The value of the contract for TR will be above 1,100 million US dollars and will have an execution period of 49 months until the commissioning of all the units. The high standard conversion STAR Refinery will be the most comprehensive oil downstream project of Turkey, the Spanish corporation said in a press release, with an annual crude oil processing capacity of 10 million tons.

“By adapting the most advanced technologies and applying the most stringent EU regulations and environmental standards,” TR explained, “STAR Refinery will ensure Turkey’s refining sector to substantially reduce its current external deficit of downstream petroleum products by producing naphtha, diesel, jet fuel and LPG.”

The contract has been awarded on a lump sum turnkey basis. The design for STAR Refinery will enable to process different types of crude oil such as Urals, Azeri Light and Kirkuk with an overall capacity of 10 million tons/year. The new refinery will be constructed on Petkim peninsula on approximately 2.300 hectares of area.

The refinery will have a yearly production of 0.48 million tons of ultra-low sulphur diesel, 0.16 million tons of naphtha, 0.42 million tons of mixed xylene, 0.16 million tons of jet fuel, 0.32 million tons of LPG, 0.49 million tons of reformate, 0.69 million tons of petro-coke and 0.16 million tons of sulphur at its full capacity operation. With its 63 tanks, the total storage capacity of the refinery will be of 1.640 million tons approximately.

Turkey is a priority market for Spain’s TR. It has already executed 8 previous projects in Turkey, for companies like TÜPRAS, IPRAS and BOTAS, and two more projects in the field of Nitric Acid and fertilizers for TUGSAS and TOROS GUBRE. This new contract will guarantee a further successful presence in that country in cooperation with Turkish partners and with regard to the substantial new investments to be developed in Turkey.