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البحـث الأول
مجلة النفط والتعاون العربي
161
العدد
- 2017
أربعون
المجلد الثالث و ال
2016
أوابك العلمية لعام
�
ص لبحوث العلمية الفائزة بجائزة
�
عدد خا
97
87
II base oils is also getting smaller which will encourage the use of the latter at the
expense of the first.
Saudi Arabia & the UAE:
In terms of capacity the largest re-refining plants are in Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates. The two countries were driven by tighter environmental
regulation, improved quality of virgin oils and hence used oils, rising crude oil
prices before June 2014 which made re-refining attractive.
In the UAE, the collectors are in 20 companies and more numerous than
processors, which are in 8 companies
33
. Most collected used oil was burned for
energy, producing lower grade base oils or blending with other fuels
33
.
The domestic demand for lubricants in the UAE is estimated at 108 thousand tons
a year in 2015 and therefore the collectable used oil is probably not more than 55
thousand tons a year. Yet the “collected” used oil is estimated
33
to be between
200 to 250 thousand tons a year. The majority is believed to come from importing
used oils from other Arabian Gulf countries or even further afield. Perhaps even
some marine oils from the ports are also included here.
But there is now a law prohibiting the import of used oils into the UAE which
will put a strain on capacity utilization. This will impede further investment to
improve processing to produce better grades of base oils from used oil feed. It is
the opinion of this writer that the ban should be lifted and substituted by additional
testing and controls on the imported used oil and its utilization.
In the UAE collectors pay the generators a price for their used oil in Dirham/ 200
liter drums. The price is said to be somehow related to the crude oil price.
Data privately obtained from a large used oil generator is compared to Brent crude
oil rice in Fig (23) for the period shown from January 2015 to January 2016.
While in direction the relationship of between used oil and crude oil prices is clear
but a direct relationship with crude prices with reasonably stable differential is
not there. The average of the data is $50 and $22 for Brent price and used oil
collected price respectively. The fuel oil price in the same period was probably
around $40 a barrel and therefore it seems that used oil is priced below fuel oil
prices. This is a good policy because it prevents generators from adding fuel oil
to their generated oil. Cost of transportation has to be added for delivery to a re-