Azeri SOCAR aims up to $3 billion additional investment in Turkey

Jale Özgentürk-BAKU

Azerbaijan’s state-run energy company SOCAR, a majority stakeholder of Turkish petrochemical maker Petkim, is aiming to make an additional investment worth up to $3 billion in Turkey, SOCAR Turkey chair Vagif Aliyev has said.

“SOCAR is working on a new investment for petrochemical products. The new facility may become a second Petkim,” Aliyev said in an interview in Baku.

“We are in talks with the government for this investment to be qualified as a strategic investment,” he said.

He noted that the new investment would likely be up to $3 billion, although an exact volume was not defined yet. 

The Turkish government supports strategic investments in certain sectors as part of a new investment incentive program.

SOCAR Turkey CEO Zaur Gahramanov said the company made around $11 billion of investment in Turkey in the last decade, adding that the total investments will hit $18 billion by 2020. 

“The construction of our Star Refinery will be completed in İzmir in 2018. Additionally, our wind power plant in Petkim’s area will meet some 30 percent of the energy needs of the Aliağa district,” he said, adding that it would become the largest wind power investment of SOCAR. 

Aliyev said some 70 percent of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline project (TANAP) was completed.

TANAP envisages gas transportation from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field to the western borders of Turkey.

Some 58 percent of TANAP shareholders are from SOCAR, 30 percent from Turkey’s gas grid BOTAŞ and 12 percent from BP.

Gahramanov noted that TANAP’s construction was planned to be completed by the year-end. 

“In a bid to take part in fuel supply and distribution, we had been interested in Petrol Ofisi, but we opted to be out of this process as we were unable to agree on the company price. We can build a new company in this area or buy another company,” he added. 

Austrian energy group OMV said in March it agreed to sell its Petrol Ofisi unit to Vitol Investment Partnership, managed by the Swiss-based commodities firm Vitol for 1.37 billion euros.