Emoil Petroleum Storage has started the construction of a $33-million gasoline storage and blending facility in the Jebel Ali Free Zone.
The contract to construct the facility has been awarded to Belleli Energy and the project is expected to be completed in 16 months.
Emoil is a newly established joint venture company between Emirates General Petroleum Corporation (Emarat), BP Singapore PTE Limited and Trafigura Beheer BV.
Emarat holds 60 per cent of the joint venture, while BP and Trafigura hold 20 per cent respectively.
Emoil chairman and Emarat general manager Rashid Al Shamsi said the main objective of the project was to diversify sourcing of unleaded gasoline locally.
The facility will include building nine products storage tanks of various capacities for blending and storing top quality gasoline products, with a total capacity of 203,000 cubic metres, to be built in an area covering 47,000 square metres.
Al Shamsi said, “This project will also provide new job opportunities mostly for UAE nationals.”
Meanwhile, Emarat, a marketer of automotive and industrial lubricants, sells its products through out the UAE and other markets abroad.
The company has acquired a reputation for uncompromising quality, it says.
As part of a corporate strategy to expand the export market for its range of lubricants and to intensify business opportunities beyond the GCC states, Emarat had taken part in the UAE trade fair in India.
Emarat has also signed two separate agreements to export lubricants and other oil products to Libya and Iraq.
Emarat deputy director general for sales and marketing affairs, Adel Khalifa, said that UAE’s maximum production of lubricants was about half a million tonnes per year.
This, he said, meets the local demand with surplus for export.
Local consumption of the product ranges between 100,000 to 120,000 tonnes of the total output.
He said competition on the local market was very tough as there are more than 40 trademarks on the local market. He expressed the hope that similar agreement would be signed soon with Syria, Turkey and India.
Emarat’s distribution network currently include Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ukraine and Uganda.
