The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) and KBR, the American engineering, procurement, and construction company, will create an ad hoc group of experts for the management of the reconstruction work of the Baku Oil Refinery named after Heydar Aliyev, Azer News reported.

SOCAR President, Rovnag Abdullayev, announced that after modernization the output of oil products of ‘Euro 5’ standard will be implemented at the refinery. He added that the gradual reconstruction will continue until 2019-2020.

The processing capacity of the refinery will increase from 6m to 7.5m tons of oil per year after the reconstruction is completed.

An agreement has been signed by Refinery Director, Elman Ismayilov, and board member of SOCAR-KBR joint venture, Jan Brendeland, on 7th March specifying the creation of the expert group,  the Trend News Agency reported.

In addition, as part of SOCAR’s effort to improve and optimize its structure, the company aimed for the liquidation of Azneftyag oil refinery and its merger with the Heydar Aliyev Baku Oil Refinery, first announced in January 2015.

Azerbaijan’s energy giant SOCAR is keen on expanding operations in the retail oil products market abroad. It is involved in exploring oil and gas fields, producing, processing, and transporting oil, gas, and gas condensate, marketing petroleum and petrochemical products in the domestic and international markets, and supplying natural gas to industry and the public in Azerbaijan.