Turkey Prefers Proposed Lukoil Refinery Located At Samsun
Turkey has told Russia’s Lukoil that it would prefer the latter to build a proposed $3bn refinery at Samsun rather than Zonguldak. Lukoil is seeking Ankara’s permission to build a refinery with an 8-10mn tons/year processing capacity on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. The project would include a pipeline running from Zonguldak to Izmit on the Sea of Marmara, from where Lukoil would export products. The refinery would also serve Lukoil’s plans to open retail outlets throughout Turkey, especially in the highly populated Sea of Marmara region. Lukoil is to soon begin a feasibility study on the project and has applied for a construction license (MEES, 24 July).
But during a meeting with Lukoil chief executive Vagit Alekperov in early August, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested that Samsun be considered as a location for the refinery. Samsun is some 500km west of Zonguldak, where Ankara intends to develop a crude oil terminal. From Samsun a 550km pipeline would carry Caspian crude oil to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, the site of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) loading terminal (MEES, 17 July). Turkey wants to develop Ceyhan into a world-scale energy trading hub from where crude oil from the Caspian region, Russia and Iraq would be shipped. Plans call for the construction of refineries and perhaps LNG trains. Lukoil is reported as not being very keen on the Samsun proposal. A spokesman for the company said the feasibility study would determine the best option.
Turkey intends to get the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline project under way next year. The estimated cost of constructing the 1-1.4mn b/d capacity pipeline is put at $1.5bn. Italy’s Eni and Turkey’s Calik Enerji are in the process of drawing up a feasibility study for the pipeline, which Turkey will offer to international shipping as an alternative to the tanker-congested Bosphorus and Dardanelle Straits. In early August the Press Trust of India reported that Calik Enerji and the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) had applied to build a $4.9bn refinery and petrochemical complex at Ceyhan. According to the report, IOC had also been offered a share in the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline. Moreover, UPI has reported that the Russian-UK joint venture TKN-BP expressed an interest in taking a share of the proposed pipeline to Ceyhan. TKN-BP is also a party to the proposed Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline (MEES, 1 May and 10 April).
