Shazand Arak Refinery, The Biggest in The Middle East?

abarrelfull wrote on 01 Feb 2011 07:37
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Over the weekend, we were treated to the following news.

Iran will open what is being touted as the Middle East's largest oil refinery, Shazand, in the central Iranian city of Arak in the next few days, according to a news report.

It goes on to make this startling claim.

Once the first phase of the $3.5 billion Shazand oil refinery comes onstream, some 2 million barrels per day would be added to the country's gasoline production capacity.

As this conflicted with the information I had, I started digging a little, to make sure that I wasn't wrong. Low and behold, I wasn't. To put this into perspective, Reliance, has a complex of two refineries in Jamnagar India, with a total processing capacity of about 1.2 million barrels per day, for all products. As this is the world's largest complex, the claims being made here are somewhat outlandish. It would make Shazand the largest refinery in the world by a large margin.

In fact, its not even the largest in the Middle East. After the project, capacity will be a mere 250,000 barrels per day. This compares to 360,000 bpd for Bapco Sitrah Refinery in Bahrain, 412,000 bpd for the Mina Al-Ahmadi Refinery in Kuwait, 400,000 bpd for the Yanbu JV Refinery in Saudi Arabia and even 400,000 bpd at the Abadan Refinery in Iran. So despite the report, Shazand, is not even the biggest refinery in Iran.

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Related Pages

• Ending Gasoline Subsidies in Iran

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