ANPZ Is at Standstill

On October 25, the Atyrau Oil Refinery officially completed scheduled maintenance but was unable to launch all the necessary production equipment, and the plant is idle, Orda.kz reports.

On condition of anonymity, two sources among the current employees of the Atyrau Oil Refinery confirmed that the enterprise had not been launched as usual. The launch was set for October 27.

The root of the problem is the delayed coking unit (DCU), which is essential equipment for producing petroleum products. Atyrau refinery engineers claim that the unit cannot be launched in its current state: the risk of malfunction is high.

However, the company's management and representatives of KazMunayGas say the problem must be solved as soon as possible. Every day of downtime deprives Kazakhstan of fuel.

The plant is under pressure to start up in full mode, but this is fraught with a high risk of incidents. We are talking about the DCU. Everyone, including the president, already knows about this situation. It is already a week overdue, during this time we are losing 500 thousand tons of diesel, this is a disaster,
 said one source, a current employee.

According to another source, the problem with the DCU was known ten days ago, but they still cannot understand its cause. The lack of a chief engineer may be the issue.

After Rakhimzhan Zhangabylov left this position, they did not find a replacement. Askar Yermyshev, the last acting chief engineer, recently requested to return to the shop manager position. Given the long-standing conflict between general director Galymzhan Zhusanbayev and engineering and technical specialists, the search for the cause may drag on.

One of our sources claims another critical situation arose at the plant last week: a large batch of substandard aviation fuel left the Atyrau refinery and reached the Atyrau airport.

At Atyrau airport, even flights were delayed because there was no fuel. And on top of that, the LPG — liquefied petroleum gas — was also substandard. Zhusanbayev then wrote a statement to the prosecutor's office: in his opinion, the plant employees allegedly deliberately made bad aviation fuel so that the planes would crash, and then he was blamed for all of it, said a current employee.

We also recently reported that the plant shut down the pipe rack for dark oil products, through which fuel oil flows from the plant, due to numerous violations.

Original Author: Nikita Drobny