Tatneft adding new units at Taneco’s Nizhnekamsk refinery

PJSC Tatneft, Almetyevsk, Russia, has received support from Russia’s Ministry of Energy (MoE) to help finance the addition of several new advanced processing units at the more than 10-million tonnes/year refinery of subsidiary JSC Taneco’s multiphase integrated refining and petrochemical complex in Nizhnekamsk, 250 km from Tatarstan’s capital city of Kazan.

As part of the agreement, MoE has granted Tatneft an investment premium to the refundable excise tax on crude oil until Jan. 1, 2031, to support completion of construction on four new refining plants at Nizhnekamsk by yearend 2026, Tatneft said on Mar. 25.

Intended to increase the refinery’s advanced conversion of crude for production of high-quality, cleaner products such as Euro 5-quality gasoline and diesel, the project—which will require an investment of more than 50 million rubles—will include the addition of a new units for delayed coking, catalytic cracking, heavy residue hydroconversion, and diesel fuel isodewaxing, or hydroisodewaxing, the operator said.

Ilshat Salakhov, Taneco’s general director and head of its oil and gas processing business unit, said the MoE’s investment premium mechanism is an effective economic incentive for the implementation of large-scale projects to ensure the country's energy security and help develop related industries as well as Russia’s overall economy.

The operator disclosed no details regarding proposed capacities of the new units or contractors attached to the project.

The MoE recently granted a similar financial incentive to PJSC Lukoil for completion of a deep conversion, delayed coking complex already under construction at subsidiary LLC Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez’s Kstovo refinery in central Russia (OGJ Online, Mar. 24, 2021).

Ongoing modernization

Last year, Tatneft said unidentified construction and commissioning activities were under way at the Taneco refinery’s existing middle distillate and delayed coking units as part of an ongoing program Tatarstan launched in 2005 to strengthen the republic’s refining industry, as well as in accordance with basic provisions of a quadripartite agreement on modernization of Russia’s processing industry between oil companies; the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation; the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision (Rostechnadzor); and the Federal Agency for Technical Regulating and Metrology (Rosstandart) to reequip and upgrade processing capacities at Russian Federation refineries (OGJ Online, June 3, 2020; July 6, 2016; June 1, 2016).

Tatneft’s modernization program—which aims to boost nameplate crude oil processing capacity at Nizhnekamsk to 14 million tpy—previously was scheduled to be fully completed in 2023 (OGJ Online, Jan. 29, 2018).