There are two oil refineries in Turkmenistan, Turkmenbashy and Seydi. The refineries produce a range of products, including unleaded gasoline, petroleum coke, road bitumen, laundry detergent, hydro-treated diesel, and lube oil. The government has demonstrated interest in attracting foreign investment to build factories producing end-user petroleum-based products such as detergents and tires.
Refined products are used domestically and exported primarily to Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkiye, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Japan.
Turkmenistan has announced plans to increase the country’s refining capacity by 95 percent by 2030. The projects include the construction of a facility for coking (carbonization) and tar de-asphalting with annual capacity of 900,000 and 500,000 tons, respectively, a facility to produce bitumen with an annual capacity of 38,000 tons, a facility to produce polypropylene film, and an oil refinery with a capacity of 3 billion tons per year.
A $3.4 billion gas chemical complex in Kiyanly was completed in 2018 which can produce up to 386,000 tons of polyethylene and 81,000 tons of polypropylene annually using 5 bcm of natural gas as feedstock.
The Turkmen Government has shown interest in creating natural gas refining facilities to produce polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, methanol, formaldehyde, resins, synthetic rubber, and paint materials.
In June 2019 Turkmenistan opened a $1.7 billion gas-to-gasoline plant at Ovadandepe in Ahal province. The complex is designed to process 1.785 bcm of natural gas per year into 600,000 tons of A-92 gasoline per year.
The country has expressed interest in building additional gas-to-liquids (GTL) plants in the coming years.
Opportunities
Supply of various chemicals and supplies required for refining, provision of maintenance and service on processing plants. Provision of modern hydrocarbon processing units, gas-to-liquid fuel equipment, oil and oil products storage reservoirs, sales and service to processing facilities.