The facility, also known as residuum upgrade project, will help the refinery to process low value fuel oil into valuable hydrocarbons.
Expected to reduce Turkey’s budget deficit by $1bn, the project will enable the refinery to process 4.2mt of high sulfur fuel oil and produce 3.5mt of high quality diesel/jet fuel, gasoline and LPG at Euro-V standards.
TUPRAS board head Omer Koc said: "We invested $5.2 billion in the refinery sector during the last nine years."
TUPRAS CEO Yavuz Erkut said: "The company aims to process 28 million tons of crude oil in the newly-opened facility in 2015.
"With the new facility, TUPRAS will double diesel production reaching 10 to 11 million tons annually. There will be 25-30 percent increase in jet fuel and gasoline production whereas fuel oil production will decrease by 90 percent."
The fuel oil recycling facility has a conversion capacity of 4.2 million tons of low value added products to nearly 3.5 million tons of white products and 700 thousand tons of petroleum coke.
Although Turkey has surplus of gasoline, it is still heavily dependent on diesel imports, reports Reuters.
Diesel imports of the country accounted for 95% of its fuel imports, which totaled 9.8 million tons in 2013.
Image: Turkey’s diesel imports accounted for 95% of its fuel imports in 2013. Photo: courtesy of supakitmod/Freedigitalphotos.net.
