Azernews.Az

By Kamila Aliyeva

Kazakhstan intends to export gasoline to the countries of Central Asia. This was stated by Kazakh Energy Minister Kanat Bozumbayev at a briefing on June 11, Kazinform reported.

“We are working to open exports to Central Asia, and we are also working with our Russian colleagues to open exports. We plan to reach new agreements by the end of the summer and ratify some,” he said.

The minister went on to add that Kazakhstan needs gasoline exports.

“We need to export gasoline. We will export part of the gasoline, because otherwise the reserves will exceed 600,000 tons at the oil refineries by October this year under the current utilization rates and we have nowhere to fill it,” Bozumbayev said.

Earlier, the authorities of Kazakhstan proposed to ban the import of gasoline from Russia by rail for three months. The order of the Minister of Energy Kanat Bozumbayev was published on the portal of e-government of Kazakhstan.

In April, Bozumbayev also spoke about the likely cheapening of gasoline in the country due to the excess fuel. In May 2018, prices for gasoline fell by 0.8 percent.

Kazakhstan has three major oil refineries - Atyrau, Shymkent and Pavlodar. Pavlodar refinery has already completed its modernization program. Atyrau refinery plans to launch new units by June, while Shymkent is expected to wrap up a modernization in September.

The refining capacity of all the three plants will increase from 13.8 to 16.5 million tons after modernization of the refinery completes. Production of all types of light oil products, gasoline, diesel fuel and aviation kerosene will increase. All plants will produce gasoline for 2.3 million tons more. The production of diesel fuel will increase for 917,000 tons and aviation kerosene for 539,000 tons.

As a result of 2017, the production of oil refined products reached 709.6 billion tenge in value terms – showing an increase of 14.2 percent compared to 2016. As many as 59.3 percent of the output fell to the Atyrau Refinery, 12 percent – to the Pavlodar Petrochemical Plant and 11.2 percent - to the Shymkent oil refinery. The refineries plan to increase their oil products throughput to 15.3 million tons this year, from 14.2 million tons last year.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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