Oil refinery TUPRAS sees 39 pct jump in profit

The oil refinery Turkish Petroleum Refineries (TUPRAS) has seen an increase in its net profit by 39 percent in the first nine months of this year, compared with the same period last year, the company said in a statement on Friday.

TUPRAS said the company's net profit had reached 1.735 billion Turkish lira ($603 million) in the period, up from 1.246 billion Turkish lira ($546 million) in 2014.

“In first nine months our domestic sales increased by 27.4 percent year-on-year due to high demand as oil prices are low," the company said.

Net sales decreased to 28 billion liras ($9.7 billion) between January and September of this year from 30.6 billion TL ($13.3 billion) in the same period of 2014, the company said.

Its sales by volume totaled 20.9 million tons, an increase of 4.7 million tons from the same period of last year.

Turkey's largest industrial enterprise, owned by Koc Holding, has an annual processing capacity of 28.1 million tons of crude oil.

Tupras Director General Yavuz Erkut will retire by the end of the year, and Ibrahim Yelmenoglu, assistant general manager of the company, will replace Erkut, the statement said.

Sales have improved for oil refineries as the low cost of oil has allowed them to reduce prices.