Abadan Oil Refinery in Khuzestan Province plans to start the production of Euro-4 gasoline from early May, as the aging refinery has been overhauled to improve the quality of petroleum products, the refinery’s managing director said.
“The total finance required for the second phase of upgrading Abadan Refinery is $3 billion, which is due to be provided by China’s Sinopec Engineering Company and Iran’s Oil Design and Construction Company,” Esfandiar Daemolzekr was quoted as saying by ILNA on Tuesday.
In an earlier stage, Iran's oldest crude processing facility attracted $1.05 billion in finance from Sinopec in a deal signed in December to develop the phase, Nikkei reported.
Expressing satisfaction with the progress of the project, Daemolzekr noted that while the plan will take four years to complete, some units, such as distillation, came on stream much earlier.
According to the official, in the second phase, piling has been carried out, the above-ground and underground projects have been tendered and their subcontracts will soon be implemented.
A new refinery with a capacity for processing 360,000 barrels a day will be built on the site in the second development phase.
Stressing that the project is aimed at curbing the output of mazut, he said once the phase is complete, Abadan Refinery’s mazut production will be reduced from 38% to 23%, which will then be converted to gasoline and other midstream petroleum products.
“Currently, the refinery has a gasoline output of over 12 million liters per day, up 2 million liters compared to a few months ago,” Daemolzekr added.
Abadan refinery is slated to undergo expansion in four phases. In the first phase, which has been carried out by the National Iranian Oil Engineering and Construction Company, the refinery’s distillation unit was upgraded, while in the third phase, a unit for fluid catalytic cracking, one of the most important conversion processes used in petroleum refineries was constructed.
