Maksat floats 9,000 bpd refinery at Kochkor-Ata; no investor, crude or cost named
The plant would be about a fifth the size of Nurzhan's, serving southern districts where diesel costs up to 3.65 som a litre more than at NurGaz pumps.
KOCHKOR-ATA — Lieutenant Governor Aidar Maksat told officials and residents of Lower Naryn District on Friday that the government wants a second oil refinery, to be built at Kochkor-Ata, a Fergana rim market town of about 12,000 people. He gave no investor, no source of crude, no cost and no start date. "This is a plan to be studied, not a decision," he said, according to those present.
The plant would process 450,000 tonnes a year, roughly 9,000 barrels a day, for diesel, petrol and bitumen for the southern districts. That is about a fifth of the 50,000 barrels a day that the Nurzhan Oil Refinery, Irad's only refinery, is built to handle.
The case for it is distance. Every litre sold in the south is refined at Nurzhan, about 600 km away by road and rail. Diesel costs 6.10 som at NurGaz stations; in the Chatkal villages it costs 8.55 to 9.75 som, which is 2.45 to 3.65 som, or 40 to 60 per cent, above the pump price. The Herald has seen no calculation showing how much of that gap a rim-town refinery would close.
“a plan to be studied, not a decision”Aidar Maksat
The questions the meeting left open are the basic ones. Irad has no southern crude pipeline: the Nurzhan Petroleum Pipeline runs about 90 km from the Chu field station to the refinery, and the Northern Export Feeder runs north-east to Kazakhstan. Crude for Kochkor-Ata would have to be hauled from the Chu basin, or bought elsewhere. Prof. Sergei Volkov, a petroleum engineer at Nurzhan Polytechnic Institute, said a plant of 9,000 barrels a day carries high costs per tonne. "It can only work with a steady supply of the right crude, and a steady customer for the bitumen," he said. Nurzhan's asphalt and bitumen plant already stands beside the existing refinery.
The Ministry of Natural Resources, headed by Chingiz Asanov, did not reply by deadline to questions on crude supply and licensing. NurGaz, the president of which is Kamran Bekzatov and which runs the Nurzhan refinery and about 60 per cent of the country's filling stations, also had not replied.
In Kochkor-Ata, reaction was cautious. Ms Mukhlisa Rakhimova, who sells tyres and lubricants at the Sunday market, said the town's lorries and tractors pay the same as everyone else at the pump but wait when the Nurzhan deliveries run late. "A refinery would be good if it is built," she said. "We have heard of other plans." She asked what it would do to the water and air of a town of 12,000.
From the Chatkal side, Mr Duishen Kalil uulu, a herder who buys diesel for a generator and a pickup, said the price in his village moved with the weather on the pass road. "We pay the road," he said. "If the fuel were made closer, I would like to see whether the road stops being added to the bill."
Nothing in the Lieutenant Governor's remarks sets a timetable. A study would have to name a crude supplier and an owner before any cost could be put to the Mejlis or to lenders. Until then, Irad's diesel still rests on one refinery 600 km from the people paying the most for it, and a plan is not a plant.
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