Turkmenistan to produce Euro-5 gasoline from 2016

Turkmenistan will start producing high-quality Euro-5 gasoline at the Seidi refinery from 2016, the country’s Oil and Gas Industry and Mineral Resources Ministry reported.

The U.S. Westport Trading Europe Limited company won the tender for the design and reconstruction of a production facility for the new generation gasoline.

This novel motor fuel is distinct from the previous generations in that it has a lower content of sulfur and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. With Euro-5, engines work quieter, they can be started much more quickly and easily, corrosion is prevented, and vibration and fuel consumption is reduced.

Westport Trading Europe Limited is not new in the Turkmen market. The company commissioned a new technological unit for production of road bitumen, a high-quality road-building material, at the Seidi refinery in early 2015.

The complex, covering an area of 1.5 hectares, is meant to process 118,000 metric tons of fuel oil per year and 37,200 metric tons of road bitumen annually.

The ministry said that modern highways should be constructed using high-quality materials due to Turkmenistan’s range of climatic conditions. Road bitumen, with its high operability, is thus a strategic material for the country.

Turkmenistan is one of the key players in the energy market of the resource-rich Caspian region. The Central Asian state has the world's fourth largest natural gas reserves after Russia, Iran, and Qatar, and produces about 70-80 billion cubic meters of gas each year.

The largest deposits in the country are concentrated in the Mary region in country’s east.

Turkmenistan intends to increase the production volume and export of natural gas, and diversify its routes of supply to major world markets as part of its energy strategy.

Under a program for oil and gas development, the country's annual natural gas production is planned to reach 250 billion cubic meters by 2030, which will mostly be used for export purposes.

Currently, domestic hydrocarbon products are exported to more than 40 world countries, including Turkey, China, Russia, UAE, Iran, Germany, U.S., UK, Ukraine, and Switzerland.

Oil production in Turkmenistan has increased by 7.8 percent in January-June of 2015, compared with the same period of 2014. During the reporting period, gasoline production has increased by 1.1 percent, kerosene by 0.2 percent, oil bitumen by 19.8 percent, petroleum coke by 0.2 percent, liquefied gas by 0.5 percent, and polypropylene by 0.2 percent.