ASTANA — Kazakhstan plans to increase the production of petrochemical products by 75% by the end of this year, Energy Minister Almasadam Satkaliyev said at a May 28 government meeting, reported the ministry’s press service.
Photo credit: Energy Ministry
According to Satkaliyev, the ministry is taking several measures to increase the workload of existing enterprises. This will ensure the production of 628,300 tons of petrochemical products by the end of the year, or an increase of 75% compared to the same period last year (358,700 tons). From January to April, 213,100 tons of petrochemical products were produced, which is twice as much as was produced during the same period last year.
By 2029, it is planned to implement five large projects worth nearly $14.3 billion. Implementing these projects will ensure an annual economic growth of 1.5% and create around 20,000 jobs, including 17,000 jobs at the construction stage and 3,000 jobs at the operation stage.
Kazakhstan will begin building a plant this year with a maximum capacity of 340,000 tons to produce butadiene and its derivatives. An investment decision will be made on the polyethylene project, which has a capacity of 1.2 million tons and is one of the largest in the nation’s history.
Between January and April, 5.9 million tons of oil were refined. Kazakhstan produced 4.28 million tons of petroleum products.
Satkaliyev also reported on the activities of the Ulba Metallurgical Plant JSC, part of Kazatomprom National Atomic Company, which provides services for the production of uranium oxide powders and fuel pellets for power reactors and also processes hard-to-recover uranium-containing materials. A total of 79 tons of uranium products were produced between January and April, comprising 76 tons of tablets and 3 tons of uranium dioxide powder.
Since 2021, the Ulba plant has produced fuel assemblies (FA) for Chinese nuclear power plants. In the first quarter, 76 fuel assemblies were shipped to China.
