The Jewish Autonomous Region will receive its own oil refining facility for the first time. An agreement on construction of the plant was signed at the Eastern Economic Forum between the regional government and the company Novy Bazovy Potok. The total capital investment in the project is estimated at RUB 4 billion, Governor Maria Kostyuk said.

The refinery’s processing capacity will be at least 500,000 tonnes of hydrocarbon feedstock per year. The investor expects part of the output to meet the domestic needs of the Jewish Autonomous Region and other Far Eastern regions. The rest is planned for export markets, primarily Asian countries.

According to the regional head, the facility will create around 200 jobs.

At present, two large oil refineries operate in the Far East, both in Khabarovsk Territory:

• Rosneft’s Komsomolsk Refinery in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, with processing capacity of 8–8.5 million tonnes;
• the Khabarovsk Refinery of the Independent Oil and Gas Company, or IPC, in Khabarovsk, with capacity of 5 million tonnes per year.

According to the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Far Eastern regions consume around 6 million tonnes of petroleum products per year, while production does not exceed 4 million tonnes. Additional volumes are delivered by rail from the Angarsk, Achinsk and Omsk refineries, as well as from plants in western Russia.

Construction of a refinery on Sakhalin is planned for 2030, where kerosene, marine fuel and naphtha will be produced. The plant will use gas condensate from the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye field as feedstock and, possibly, oil from the Sakhalin-2 project.