Azernews.Az

Socar Aurora Fujairah Terminal, a joint venture participated in by Azerbaijani state oil company Socar, has completed Phase 1 of building a terminal in the UAE and the operation of first tanks is expected to begin shortly, Tank Storage magazine reported quoting SOCAR Aurora's CEO Ammar Kutait.

According to Kutait, the commercial operation of three tanks with total capacity of 115,000 cubic meters will begin on January 30.

Besides Socar, Aurora Progress S.A. and the government of Fujairah hold stakes in the Socar Aurora Fujairah Terminal joint venture.

Terminal in Fujairah Port in UAE is being constructed by Socar Trading, a subsidiary of Socar. Socar and Aurora Progress, which is based in Switzerland, reached an agreement on cooperation in the development of oil storage facilities, including providing a terminal for the storage of petroleum products, in May 2010.

Socar Trading has already made investments in the construction of the 645,000 cubic meter terminal in Fujairah via Socar Aurora. The Fujairah Terminal consists of 20 tanks and has the capacity for handling gasoline, naphtha, middle distillates and other petroleum products. Kutait said Phase 2 of the terminal, which is expected to take around 15 months, will up the storage capacity to 350,000 cubic meters by using nine additional tanks.

Phase 3 will begin once customer demand has been secured.

"We are already commencing discussions over the implementation of Phase 3 and we would expect to be able to make a decision on the go ahead of this phase in the first quarter of 2012, but we don't see any reason to wait," Kutait said.

In May 2011 Arab Petroleum Investments Corp. (APICORP) was mandated the sole arranger by Socar Aurora Fujairah Terminal for a $110 million term loan facility, consisting of two tranches, to finance the phased development of the project.

In December 2011 APICORP and National Bank of Fujairah signed an agreement on the allocation of the first tranche, worth $61 million, to Socar Aurora Fujairah Terminal.

APICORP is a development bank owned by 10 Arab oil-producing nations.