Thai Oil, the country's top oil refiner, plans to invest about $0.5-1.0 billion over the next five years to expand capacity of its refinery and produce more value-added petrochemical products, its chief executive said.
The refiner, nearly half owned by Thailand's top energy firm, PTT Pcl, was studying plans to boost its refining capacity by 9 percent to 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), Surong Bulakul told Reuters in an interview.
"The investment budget will be five years until 2015-2016 and this is for our organic growth," Surong, 56, said, adding his company was considering various options for refinery expansion.
One was building a new hydrocracking unit, which required investment of about $200-300 million, and another was converting fuel oil into higher-margin diesel, which needs lower investment, he said.
Thai Oil has refining capacity of 275,000 bpd of crude and other feedstocks, representing about 21 percent of Thailand's total. Fuel oil accounts for 10 percent of its products.
Thai Oil, a flagship in the refinery busienss of PTT group, is keen to join with PTT to expand overseas, especially in Southeast Asia, Surong said. Thai Oil has reduced its imports of Middle East crude to 65-70 percent from 90 percent in the past few years and was looking at various types of crude to diversify sources and boost margins, Surong said.
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