The state Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, SOCAR, purchased the Petkim petrochemical plant from the Turkish Government in 2007. The plant is located in the Aliaga Peninsula of the Izmir Region. On this peninsula there are numerous highly polluting facilities, including the country's largest oil refinery, the Koc Group's Tupras. Before Tupras and Petkim were sold in privatization programs, they were a single facility. Together with consultants from the Jurong Petroleum facility in Singapore, SOCAR put together a plan to transform this peninsula into a complex of fossil fuels facilities.

In June 2010 the Socar Turkey Aliaga Refinery was granted a pre-licence for the same site. Between August 2011 and February 2014 Socar has been undertaking heavy excavation works. These are carried out by a construction company owned by the Aliaga mayor's son. With local governmental leaders in a conflict of interest regarding the project, local activists are going up against all odds and face severe pressures. Currently the excavation works contract has been terminated and a local prosecutor has opened a court case against the mayor's son, reported in Aliaga Express newspaper. Nonetheless, the public has opposed the project and an initial coal plant EIA meeting was canceled due to protests and later "rescheduled" without informing the local community.

In 2013 the EBRD announced its intention to invest USD 150 million. A Board decision was expected in early 2014. With this project, the EBRD would have been setting an example in Turkey as Turkish banks will lend under any conditions as long as EBRD puts its name on the loan package. In the public domain it is known that EP bank Unicredit is the lead financial arranger. It has disseminated the diligence reports to other commercial banks. These reports do not mention the coal plant or the geothermal reservoir.

Currently a local non-governmental organization and Buhar Enerji, the renewable energy company that holds the license for the geothermal resource, have submitted complaints to the Project Complaints Mechanism of the EBRD.

In February 2014, CEE Bankwatch Network, supported by nine other international NGOs including BankTrack, Greenpeace Mediterranean, Friends of the Earth, sent a letter to EBRD President and Executive directors and the IFC, calling on the Bank and potential lenders to reject this project or delay its approval until proper due diligence and satisfactory public consultations have been carried out, and legal disputes have been successfully resolved.

In March 2014 EBRD and IFC, The World Bank's International Finance Corporation, announced having withdrawn planned contributions of USD 150 million each for the refinery. Funding such dirty-energy projects runs counter to EBRD guidelines, but neither EBRD nor the IFC have implied that pressure from the NGOs has any link with their decisions to cancel financing for the refinery. According to media reports , the  lenders withdrew their EUR 300 Milliono support for the project because intercreditor policy requirements could not be met by the sponsor by April's deadline.

In January 2015 it was announced that the project had raised USD 3.29 billion in debt financing from seven export credit agencies and sixteen commercial banks.