South Korea<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s SK Engineering and Construction Co (SKEC) signed a heads of agreement on Saturday for a 1.6 billion euro upgrade of the Tabriz refinery in northwest Iran, the Shana news agency said.<\/p>\n

South Korean<\/a><\/strong> National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun, who is in Tehran to attend President Hassan Rouhani\u2019s swearing-in, oversaw the signing between SKEC, Tabriz Oil Refining Company and National Iranian Oil Engineering and Construction Company (NIOEC<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of the signing of the agreement, which is about to be signed into a contract in the near future, is to convert the furnace oil produced at the Tabriz refinery to products of higher value according to Euro 5 standard,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

Export-Import Bank of Korea will finance the project which includes upgrades to desulfurization equipment as well as gasoline, diesel and other facilities, it added.<\/p>\n

The project will be carried out over a period of 48 months, bringing down the furnace oil capacity at the refinery to 2.0% from 20% now. Furnace oil is also known as fuel oil.<\/p>\n

The Tabriz oil processing plant, built in 1976, is among the Iranian refineries in dire need of upgrade and modernization. In February, the country signed a $3 billion contract with China to upgrade the Abadan refinery in southwest Iran.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Tabriz operates with a capacity of 110,000 barrels per day, turning crude oil to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), gasoline and diesel fuel.<\/p>\n

According to Managing Director of National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company Abbas Kazemi, Iran needs $14 billion of investment in total to fix and upgrade Tehran, Bandar Abbas, Isfahan, Tabriz and Abadan refineries.<\/p>\n

Iranian refineries, he said in February, were operating at a capacity of 500,000 barrels per day, which would rise to 600,000 bpd in the current Persian year.<\/p>\n

Iran expected to sign oil refining contracts worth $8.6 billion with a number of Japanese, Chinese and Korean companies, Kazemi said then, adding the biggest deal was reserved for Japan\u2019s Marubeni, Chiyoda and Mitsui companies to upgrade Isfahan refinery at $3.6 billion.<\/p>\n

A separate $2 billion contract is about to be signed with South Korea\u2019s Daelim company to boost oil processing capacity at Isfahan refinery, said Kazemi, who is also Iran’s deputy petroleum minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Korea\u2019s SK Engineering and Construction Co (SKEC) signed a heads of agreement on Saturday for a 1.6 billion euro upgrade of the Tabriz refinery in northwest Iran, the Shana news agency said. South Korean National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun, who is in Tehran to attend President Hassan Rouhani\u2019s swearing-in, oversaw the signing between SKEC,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[436],"tags":[1355,1357,1356,927,233,1354,349,1358],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}