Gazprom Neft opened its new 70,000 metric tons per year lubricants blending plant in Omsk, Western Siberia, and expects an additional 110,000 t/y upgrade by 2013.
Increasing the quality of finished products is among the highest priorities of our companys strategy development, Alexey Miller, Gazproms president, said during the plants opening ceremony last week. The new [lubes] production complex at Omsk refinery could only benefit the modern lubricants production in Russia.
Gazprom Neft-SM, the oil majors lube arm, operates the blending plant.
The complex includes a facility for lubes packaging production, filling line, feedstock and finished products storage, as well as a modern tank storage facility. The system has the potential to automatically fill more than 350 different types of products, and the finished products warehouse has 10,000 tons storage capacity, the company said.
Upon reaching full capacity in 2013, the 180,000 t/y lubricants blending facility is expected to produce a wide assortment of industrial and automotive lubricants. The upgraded segment will produce Gazprom Nefts premium motor oil brand G-Energy. Streaming is expected to start in the second quarter of 2013, according to Ivan Yakovlev, head of Gazprom Neft-SMs strategic marketing department.
At the moment, there is ongoing construction work on the fully automated 110,000 t/y blending complex that will produce our premium synthetic brand G-Energy. The technologies used here will be the same as in our blending plant in Bari, Italy, he told Lube Report.
Gazprom Neft-SM was created in 2007. The company operates five blending facilities in Russia, Italy and Serbia. It also operates a 240,000 t/y API Group I base oil plant in Omsk. Additionally it operates a 250,000 t/y Group I base oil plant in Yaroslavl, under the Slavneft 50-50 joint venture with the Russian oil company TNK-BP. That facility is scheduled to be upgraded to produce 100,000 t/y of Group III base oil by 2014, to be shared equally between Gazprom and TNK-BP.
The companys total annual base oil and finished lubricants production capacity amounts to around 450,000 tons and in 2011 it held a 14 percent share of Russias lubricants market. The company markets its products in 35 countries, including Italy, Serbia and other South European countries, as well as in Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries.