Star refinery in Aegean İzmir receives offer for $5 bln loan

ISTANBUL

Socar Turkey Head Kenan Yavuz poses during an interview. CİHAN photo

Turkey’s Turcas Petrol, one of the stockholders of the Star refinery project, has said the project received binding offers from 17 national and international banks to loan $5 billion for its financing.

Star Refinery Inc., in which Turcas Petrol’s subsidiary Turcas Refinery Investments owns 18.5 percent stake, has received binding offer to finance the project, Turcas announced to the Public Disclosure Platform yesterday. Some 17 national and international banks offered loan totaling around $5 billion as necessary financing amount is $3.5 billion, it said. After Star Refinery Inc makes a choice among offers, the closure process of project financing will start, it said.

Socar Turkey and a consortium led by Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas signed in May an agreement yesterday to build “Star Refinery,” worth $4.3 billion in the western province of İzmir.

SOCAR, which controls Turkish petrochemical giant Petkim, owns 81.5 percent of the project, while Turkey’s Turcas Petrol owns the remaining 18.5 percent. Star Refinery is planned to have an annual capacity of 10 million tons to refine different crude oil types.

Socar is currently the biggest foreign direct investor in Turkey. Some $475 million was recently transferred to Turkey from Azerbaijan to finance the forthcoming expenditures in the STAR Refinery, the most important part of integration investments in the Petkim Peninsula. This is in addition to some $350 million worth of previous money transfers, which is the largest money transfer to have been spent as foreign direct investment in Turkey. The STAR Refinery is slated to come into operation by the middle of 2017.