Azernews.Az

By Sara Israfilbayova

The construction of SOCAR’s carbamide plant in Sumgait city is completed by 95 percent, Plant’s President Khayal Jafarov told reporters on the sidelines of the 24th International Caspian Oil & Gas Exhibition and Conference on June 1.

The engineering work and procurement of equipment have been completed by 100 percent, construction work - by 89 percent, civil engineering work - by 97 percent, installation of equipment - by 75 percent, according to him.

“It is planned to complete all work and start adjustment and commissioning of the plant by the end of 2017,” he said, noting that production of carbamide will start in the first half of 2018.

The production capacity of the plant will be about 650,000-660,000 tons per year. About 150,000-200,000 tons of carbamide is planned to be supplied to the domestic market . The remaining volumes will be exported, in particular to Turkey, Georgia and the markets of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea countries.

South Korea’s Samsung Engineering won the tender for the construction of the carbamide plant. Samsung Engineering acts as a general contractor of the plant’s construction, but it has no license for production of carbamide and ammonia, which will be by-product in the carbamide production process. Therefore, the relevant licensing agreements were signed with Haldor Topsoe company (Denmark) for production of ammonia and Stamicarbon B.V. company (the Netherlands) for production of carbamide.

Production at the plant will be environmentally friendly. The entire control system will be fully automated and will meet the highest requirements, including in terms of safety.

The carbamide plant will need 1.5 million cubic meters of gas per day to full capacity.

The commissioning of the plant will cease dependence of Azerbaijan on the import of nitrogen fertilizers, and it can be confidently asserted that in 2018 carbamide will become one of the weighty items of Azerbaijan's non-oil export.

The carbamide plant will strengthen the non-oil sector of Azerbaijan, and due to the localization of production will allow to spend the saved currency for other needs. It is extremely important that significant volumes of carbamide production contribute to the increase of the export potential of the country, which will bring additional revenues to the budget and give impetus to the development of the non-oil sector.

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