The country has met its lubricants demand solely through imports, the agency reported.

At the moment we are expecting the new plant to cover a quarter of Kazakhstans total demand, Bahadir Saidulaev, executive director of Hill, the company which runs the blending plant, told Kazakh news agency Khabar. He noted importing lubricants is time consuming, and that the new blending plant could reduce delivery time from two months to two weeks.

We can produce different types of motor oils, and we are expecting soon to start to manufacture industrial lubes as well: gear, hydraulic, turbine and compressor [oils]. The price of the final product would be 15 percent lower then the imports, Saidulaev told Khabar.

The whole production cycle is supervised by the laboratory equipped with the latest oil refining technologies. We check the quality and characteristics of the lubricants, and we guarantee that their quality corresponds with the lubes performances [required by] international standards, Yevgenia Yefimova, head of the plants laboratory, stated.

The plant produces several types of automotive lubricants. Its first customers are the state-owned oil and gas producers KazMunayGas and Intergas, Kazinform noted.

The blending plant imports base oils, the news agency pointed out, but the company managements long-term goal is to set up its own base oil production as well.

To diversify the countrys economy, which relies heavily on raw material exports, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev recently set up an agenda to develop the countrys oil refining, agriculture, construction, transportation and other industry sectors. Kazakhstan has several ongoing development projects in different industries, including chemical, machine building and pharmaceuticals, due between 2012 and 2015.

Nazarbaev, an autocratic leader who has ruled Kazakhstan since the fall of the Soviet Union, praised the blending plant project idea last September when he visited Shymkent to see the sites construction development, Kazinform said.