Azeri firm to become largest investor

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Socar will be the largest single investor in Turkey, Kenan Yavuz says. DHA photo

Azerbaijan’s state-run energy company Socar will become the largest single foreign investor in Turkey within six years, according to Kenan Yavuz, the chief executive Turkey Enerji A.Ş., the local subsidiary of the Baku-based company.

“If we look at the whole picture of investments currently being made by Socar in Turkey, it will reach $17 billion by 2018,” Yavuz said in an interview published on the website of Business New Europe yesterday. “At the end of the day, Socar and Azerbaijan will be the biggest single investor in Turkey.”

The Socar-Turkey ties include the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline that carries Azeri crude to Turkey’s Ceyhan Mediterranean oil hub, and the South Caucasus Pipeline that runs parallel to BTC and carries Azeri gas to Turkey and on to Greece.

Additional refinery
Socar’s purchase through privatization of Petkim, Turkey’s former state petrochemical company, and the upgrade and expansion programs for the complex in the Aegean province of İzmir total $2.5 billion Star refinery, an additional facility to existing Petkim plant, is a leading project there and is a Socar partnership with Turkish energy group Turcas, he said. “Currently, we’re doing site preparation, and we expect to tender for the engineering design and construction by the end of the year, and to start construction in 2014.”

The facility will refine not only Azeri crude but resources from other countries as well, he said, adding that it would produce 6 million tons of diesel and 500,000 tons of jet fuel a year for sale to local and regional markets along with liquefied petroleum gas and aromatics to be used locally or exported.

The plant will also produce 700,000 tons of petroleum coke, which will be used in another of Socar’s investment projects, a 600-megawatt power plant.

The $1.5 billion power plant, which will be built adjacent to the Petkim facility, will generate power for the two refineries there.

Other investments for the site include a wind power plant to take advantage of the peninsula’s near constant winds and a $400 million injection to upgrade and expand its existing port facilities, Business New Europe reported. The largest of Socar’s planned investments in Turkey is the $7 billion Trans-Anatolian Project, the pipeline to carry Caspian natural gas to Turkey and subsequently onto Europe.