|
Shanghai: China and Syria have signed an agreement to build a joint venture refinery in eastern Syria, expanding their cooperation to include oil processing, China National Petroleum Corp said in a statement seen yesterday.
The agreement was signed April 2, during a visit to Syria by Li Chang-chun, a member of China's powerful Politburo, the company said.
It calls for state-owned CNPC, China's biggest oil and gas company, to build a refinery with an annual capacity of five million tonnes (about 110,000 barrels a day), it said.
No financial terms were mentioned. Earlier, the two sides were in talks on a $1 billion refinery project, but Syrian media reports said the planned capacity was expanded from 70,000 barrels a day to 100,000 barrels a day, raising the cost to $1.5 billion.
CNPC is to shoulder 85 percent of the costs of the project, which is expected to begin operations by late 2011, the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily reported.
|
