Yerevan, January 26 /Mediamax/. The “Gazprom Oil” Company confirmed that it is considering the possibility of constructing an oil-processing factory (OPF) in Armenia.

As the Russian “Kommersant” newspaper writes today, here they mean a factory on the border with Iran, which would have the might to process up to 7mln tons of oil per year.

The construction cost of the OPF is estimated to make minimum $1,7bln without taking into consideration the transport infrastructure, which will make about $1mln.

According to the data of the newspaper, the Armenian side primarily proposed Russia to build a factory with the might to process 3-4mln tons.

“However, Moscow made a counteroffer, increasing the might of OPF almost twice. The oil demand of Armenia itself does not exceed 250 thousand tons per year. Why it is needed is easy to understand from the location of the future factory - it was proposed to be built on the Armenian-Iranian border, in the region of Meghri. The oil will be arriving to the factory from Iran, for which it will be necessary to build a 200 km pipeline from the Iranian Tebriz, where there is already an OPF, up to the border with Armenia. The transportation of the oil back to Iran is proposed to realize by railroad, which also does not exist”, the newspaper writes.

“Experts consider the given project meaningless from the economic point of view, explaining the interest for the project by political motives. Indeed, an OPF in Armenia is a political project, the potential participants of which count on receiving first of all political dividends”, “Kommersant” writes.