TEHRAN (PIN) – An official in charge of the major development plan at Isfahan Refinery noted that basic engineering design of the refinery will end during the current Iranian calendar year (started March 21, 2006).

The Public Relations Department of Petroleum Engineering and Development Company quoted Shahrokh Darvish as saying that the contract for basic engineering of the refinery has been put into effect and will be completed in a maximum of 5 months.

The official said a French company is in charge of designing the main units while the British UOP IS in charge of designing low density naphtha isomerization as well as refining liquid gas produced by cat cracker plant.

“Denmark’s Tapso designs diesel refining unit, Germany’s Linde designs hydrogen unit and Italy’s Technip design sulfur production unit.

Darvish said the refinery is working with the capacity of about 370,000 barrels of crude oil per day and major development plan aims to increase quality of refining operations and increase gasoline output.

“Isfahan refinery produces about 100,000 barrels of fuel oil per day. The plan will convert fuel oil to gasoline and, therefore, daily production capacity of gasoline at the refinery will rise to boost domestic gasoline production by more than 12 million liters per day,” he said.

The official stated that in addition to gasoline, the refinery will produce about 15,000 barrels more diesel and 7,000 barrels of propylene while liquid gas output will also double.

Darvish said that major development plan for Isfahan refinery will finish in about 36 months.

Total investment in the plans has been mentioned at over 1.6 billion dollars.