Baltic States – CIS, Energy, Estonia, Good for Business, Investments, Oil, Transport

The company's representatives said that the plant will be built mainly for loan money but despite that it will be the biggest industrial direct investment in Estonia after regaining independence, whose price is exceeded only by the EUR 1.3 billion cost of Rail Baltica, writes Postimees.

Last week, OÜ Jukonoil put to public debate in Sillamäe an environmental impacts project, in order to build a factory that processes 2.4 million tonnes of oil imported from Russia a year while a tenth of the raw material is gas condensate, a by-product of gas exploration.

"We're going to produce nearly a hundred different products, the lion's share of which will be petrol and diesel fuel, but from the production waste substances we will produce, for example, lubricants," explained Jukonoil's technical director Igor Kleiner. "We intend to export to Florida, the United States, for example, where there are particularly high car fuel quality requirements." Jukonoil will employ approximately 250 employees, but associated services needed for the factory to operate can increase the new jobs count in this industrial town to over 300.

If Sillamäe town government gives Jukonoil a construction permit, after a public debate on the environmental impact, the design and construction will take up to 30 months.

The Jukonoil project will be extraordinary also for the Sillamäe port that has four terminals and a truck parking facility, since it covers with its 65-hectare space need nearly a tenth of the total area of the port.

Despite the fact that the Jukonoil factory could provide work to the majority of the unemployed of Sillamäe, of whom there were around 440 people at the end of last year, there are active opponents to the project in the historical industrial town who say that the concentration of potentially dangerous industrial companies in one area is most likely the highest in Estonia in Sillamäe, the factory would be located just 700 metres from residential areas and the smell pollution in the town is already near the allowed level.