Caspian Energy (CE): Mr. Ismayilov, the fundamental modernization is currently underway at the Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery. Could you please specify the key safety criteria of the units under construction? What will be the impact on the environment?
Elman Ismayilov, Director of SOCAR Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery: The renovation and modernization works are currently underway at the Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery under the instructions of President Ilham Aliyev to enable produced gasoline and diesel fuel to meet the Euro-5 standards, to ensure production of competitive domestic and foreign oil products and to meet the demand for oil products on the domestic market until 2030.
As in the rest of the world, to ensure safe operation of all units HAOR uses the so-called bunker operators enabling to control all installations from one point. So, if any emergency situation or threat of fire and explosion occurs on the territory of the process units, the personnel controlling the facility will be in a safe bunker, away from the process units.
The technology of new units includes construction of new flares, which is an integral part of the production process. The irradiation zone of gases combusted at flares is designed in such a way that it does not jeopardize human life. The diameter of the area is 360 meters. The flare height is 140 meters.
All process units should be provided with flares, so that in any emergency situation emitted gases could be burnt without doing harm to the environment.
CE: Are the new HAOR’s units designed for processing of sour crude oil with the high content of mercaptans? What will be a proportion of heavy metals (nickel, vanadium, etc.) in a final product at the refinery?
Elman Ismayilov: All oil products contain heavy metals, including vanadium. They are few, but they are present. The positive feature of hydrotreating units under construction is that these metals settle on the surface of their catalysts, which absorb them, and as a result metals are removed from oil products. Each catalyst has its own service life. When it expires, the manufacturer refreshes this catalyst, activates it and returns it to the unit. This process is envisaged at all hydrotreating units. Hydrotreating means purification from all mercaptans.
At the same time, in the LBC process, which purifies from mercaptans, sulfur content in sulfur-containing gases is reduced to 1 ppm. After hydrotreating and amine treating sulfur-containing gases are fed to the sulfur unit, where elementary sulfur is produced. Later this elementary sulfur can be supplied to chemical companies. According to the European standard, the sulfur content in engine fuel will be 10 ppm. The content of other heavy metals is so small that according to the European standard they are not measured.
At present, the capacities of designed units are intended exclusively for Azeri oil, but in the future obviously other sorts of oil could be processed.
In general, the environmental impact depends on motor fuel. If it is clean, it will have no impact on the environment. The sulfur content of sulfur-containing gases burned in the furnaces will be 50 ppm. The furnaces will use only gas, which also reduces the environmental impact. Gas will be fed into a furnace only after amine treating. All these processes preclude any negative environmental impact.
CE: What stage has the construction of process units reached?
Elman Ismayilov: First of all, as you know, after revamping the capacity of the ELOU-AVT-6 crude oil distillation unit will grow from current 6 to 7.5 million tonnes per year, the capacity of the catalytic cracking unit will increase from current 2 to 2.5 million tonnes per year. The remaining units are designed for capacity capable to receive those volumes.
The main objective of modernization and renovation is to obtain motor fuel (petrol and diesel) meeting the Euro-5 standard. These works will be performed in 3 phases.
A new bitumen unit shall be commissioned by July 2018 within phase 1 scope.
On September 19, 2016, President Ilham Aliyev attended the groundbreaking ceremony for a new bitumen unit within the framework of the Refinery Reconstruction Project.
The production capacity of the new unit will be higher than that of the existing one. The old unit is producing 250,000 tonnes per year, while the capacity of the new unit will be 400,000 tonnes of products per year. The unit will produce road bitumen EN 40/60.
The basic engineering and front-end engineering design of the bitumen unit is complete. The detail engineering is 60% complete and will be ended in July 2017. By means of the tender AZFEN has been selected to construct the bitumen unit.
The second phase is the diesel phase. A diesel hydrotreating unit with the capacity of 3 million tonnes per year will be built. A unit with the capacity of 45,000 cubic meters per hour will be built to provide the unit with hydrogen. At the same time a unit for sulfur removal from diesel fuel and a sulfur processing unit with the capacity of 13,000 tonnes per year will be built.
The diesel phase also includes construction of a sour water stripper, a Merox unit for LPG production and an amine scrubber. The works within phase 2 scope will have been finalised by mid-2020.
At the same time works will be performed within phase 3 scope - the gasoline phase. These works are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2020. A hydrotreating section of the catalytic cracking unit, the isomerization unit and the MTBE unit will be built to increase the octane number of gasolines.
CE: Is it feasible to increase the capacity of units in the future?
Elman Ismayilov: After modernization the HAOR’s capacity will grow by 25%. The refinery will produce 1.9 million tonnes of gasoline per year instead of the current 1.2 million (25% of total production of oil products at the refinery), 3 million tonnes of diesel fuel per year instead of the current 1.9 million (37%), 1 million tonnes of kerosene per year instead of the current 700,000 tonnes (13%) and other types of petroleum products (25%).
The renovation at the refinery will be fully completed by the end of 2020. The project is financed by the state in accordance with the orders of President Ilham Aliyev.
The project provides the possibility of increasing the capacity by 10%. We expect to process 7.5 million tonnes and supply 20-25% of oil products for export.
CE: Could you please tell about the key results of the Refinery’s economic activity?
Elman Ismayilov: In the first quarter the Refinery’s management team and staff achieved good results in fulfilling the SOCAR’s production objectives and instructions. Thanks to the maximum use of the human and technical potential, we implemented the production program.
Over the period under review the Refinery processed 1,506.1 thousand tonnes of feedstock, of this 1,486.3 thousand tonnes of oil and 19.8 thousand tonnes of semi-finished products.
Despite the fact that according to the instructions of SOCAR the Refinery worked in the “mazut operation mode” in the winter months in order to provide Azenergji OJSC with fuel oil in the cold season, during this period works were carried out to optimize the Refinery’s core activities. The rational use of production capacities of all process units, especially the processes of reprocessing of heavy and light feeds, was put in place at the Refinery thanks to the oil refiners, and the conditions were created for production of more expensive oil products from the existing resources of residual components of lower value produced during processing. Over the period under review we brought the processing depth to 84.3% in conditions of the “mazut operation mode”, up 6.7% compared to the actual figure in the first quarter of 2016.
Over the period under review the Refinery produced 306.5 thousand tonnes of motor gasoline, 597.8 thousand tonnes of jet and diesel fuel, 57.2 thousand tonnes of liquid gas, 41.5 thousand tonnes of petroleum coke, 17.3 thousand tonnes of oil bitumen, 11.9 thousand tonnes of DT motor fuel, 3.7 thousand tonnes of lubricating oils of different brands. For the chemical industry the Refinery produced 47.0 thousand tonnes of hydrotreated gasoline, 16.2 thousand tonnes of sweet dry gas. HAOR produced 181.8 thousand tonnes of fuel oil and other petroleum products were produced for Azerenerji and other organizations. In general, for the period under review the Refinery produced commodities worth 442.7 million AZN. 21% of produced commodities went for export.
