ANKARA: Devaluation of Turkish Lira and manat will not affect SOCAR’s projects in Turkey, SOCAR Turkey Energy CEO Zaur Gahramanov said. “Our projects in Turkey are not for 4-5 years, but for 40-50 years. No crisis affects our projects. We’ll continue investing”, he said. Gahramanov added that STAR refinery worth $2.7 billion will be launched in 2018.
According to him, $150 is invested in Petkim every year and Petkim’s market share may reduce from 17% to 10% without these investments: “Petkim faces some woes in terms of chemical products. After reaching Free Trade Agreements with South Korea and Iran, the products imported from these countries negatively affected competitiveness of our products. We expect Turkey government to impose tax on those products. Otherwise, we’ll face difficulties. Competition with tax will be fair”. Speaking about Petlim project, Gahramanov noted that the first phase has been completed successfully. The second phase will be launched in June.
