The Heydar Aliyev Baku Oil Refinery and SOCAR Fugro LLC have signed a contract to carry out groundwater exploration as part of the refinery’s modernization, the Azerbaijani State Oil Company (SOCAR) said.

The contract was signed by the refinery’s director, Elman Ismayilov and general manager of SOCAR Fugro, Chris Mott.

SOCAR Fugro LLC is an Azerbaijan-Dutch joint venture.

Department of Geology and Geophysics of SOCAR will work jointly with SOCAR Fugro.

The contract signed envisages installation of geodesic signs of the second category, study of a number of refinery areas, as well as the infrastructure of adjoining territories, the infrastructure of all available technical facilities (those of primary refining, catalytic cracking, catalytic reforming, gradual coking), pipes and cables, as well as free refinery areas, which new units will be built.

The received data will be presented to the designer and used in the subsequent stages of the project, according to SOCAR.

The modernization of the Heydar Aliyev Baku Oil Refinery will be completed by late 2018, and afterwards, the refinery’s processing capacity will rise from 6 million to 7.5 million tons of oil per year.

The modernization is estimated at $1 billion.