State-owned Belarus oil company Naftan last week started a low tonnage API Group III base oil unit at its Novoplotsk refinery, a company official told Lube Report on Monday.
The base oil is produced as a by-product at the refinery’s fuel hydrocracking unit, according to the official, who asked not to be identified because the project was still in its early phase.
At the moment the [unit’s] total output is only 6,000 tons annually, with possibility for further expansion in the following years. Our Group III base oil product is slated for export, and it will be sold at the Minsk stock exchange, where the refinery’s lube products are offered, the Naftan official said.
The product’s general technical characteristics show that it has Group III base oil quality, he continued. “But further testing is needed to confirm that it can match the same products offered on the market.”
Novopolotsk refinery, which produces finished lubricants as well as other petrochemical products, is also a site of the additives producer LLK-Naftan, a joint venture between LLK-International, Russia’s biggest lubricants marketer and Naftan.